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"MEMBERS OF ONE BODY" 



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BY 



SAMUEL McCHORD CROTHERS 



Preached at Unity Church, St. Paul, Minnesota 



BOSTON % \ S & * ^ 
GEORGE H. ELLIS, 141 FRANKLIN STREET 
1892 



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COPYRIGHT 

BY S. M. CROTHERS 

1892 



INTRODUCTION 

There is a loyalty to one's creed which 
is to be commended. The man who has 
a reason for his own opinion, and who has 
the courage always to declare it, is not to 
be despised; and each church may well seek 
to cultivate such loyalty on the part of its 
members. But it has also a larger work 
than this. It must teach loyalty to the 
spirit which is behind all forms of thought 
and worship. That religious culture is im- 
perfect which does not enable one to inter- 
pret sympathetically his neighbor's creed 
and to see its spiritual significance. In 
the following sermons I attempted to per- 
form this service for my own congregation; 
and they are now published with the hope 
that they may be of some help to others. 

In confining my attention to a few famil- 



4 Introduction 

iar phases of historic Christianity, I have 
not meant to imply that here we may find 
the limit to our religious sympathies. Be- 
yond Christianity is humanity. He who be- 
gins to ask, "Who is my neighbor?" will 
not. be satisfied with any answer which does 
not include all the race. But, lest we lose 
ourselves in barren generalizations, and, at- 
tempting to include all, fail to come into 
close sympathy with any, let us remember 
that "neighbor" means always the "nigh- 
dweller." We must begin with the form of 
faith that is nearest us and that touches us. 
When we come to understand that and see 
in it something to love, we shall be pre- 
pared to reach out and touch what is still 
beyond. 

St. Paul, Minn., May i, 1892. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



I. Roman Catholicism 9 

II. Calvinism 29 

III. Methodism 51 

IV. Rationalism . . 69 

V. Mysticism 91 

VI. The Unity of Christendom . . . . ioq 



ROMAN CATHOLICISM 



ROMAN CATHOLICISM 

ONE cannot treat the Roman Catholic 
Church as he would one of the little 
sects into which Christendom is divided. 
It is an institution august and historic. 
One may recognize all its corruptions, and 
yet still admire. Simply to have lived 
through so many generations and to have 
adapted itself to so many changing condi- 
tions is to have done much. And, unlike 
many Oriental religions, its life has not 
been measured by mere duration, but has 
been full of action. Not "cycles of 
Cathay," but centuries of Europe and the 
still more vital years of America, have 
tested its quality. To attempt to sum up 
its good and ill, and strike the balance be- 
tween, would be presumptuous. It is the 
church of Saint Francis and of the Borgias, 
of Fenelon and of Torquemada: it has 



io "Members of One Body" 

produced the u Imitation of Christ " and the 
horrors of Saint Bartholomew's Eve. All 
this is but to say that it has had a history. 
It has touched the heights, and has not 
been unacquainted with the depths of hu- 
man nature. To judge it is to sit in judg- 
ment on humanity. But, not venturing 
upon this, we may, with profit to ourselves, 
call to mind some of the good things for 
which we are indebted to the Catholic 
Church. 

And, first of all, we are indebted to it 
for the emphasis which it places on the 
historic element in religion. Engrossed 
in the present or dreaming of the future, 
we are apt to forget the past or to treat 
it with contempt; and, in so doing, we 
rob the present of its strength and the 
future of its glory. For, when we would 
paint the picture of religion, the canvas of 
the present is too small, and that of the 
future too unsubstantial, for the large, free 
outlines. Centuries must pass before we 
can discern the true proportions of great men 
or trace the full effects of their thoughts and 
deeds. As with secular, so with religious 



Roman Catholicism n 

heroes : there is no substitute for the test of 
time. The new sects of Protestantism suf- 
fer greatly from the lack of historic per- 
spective. The little great man of to-day is 
admired out of all proportion to his worth, 
and a mere eddy of thought is often mis- 
taken for the main current. Religion is 
vulgarized by being treated as if it were a 
new invention, and it is taken for granted 
that the latest fashion is the best. 

The existence of the Roman Catholic 
Church is a protest against all this. Chris- 
tianity, it says, is a thing not of to-day, but 
for all time. It is not merely for the com- 
fort of the private soul, but it has some- 
thing public and continuous. The grace of 
which Holy Church is minister is perennial. 
As there is a spirit of Christ which is im- 
mortal, so there is also an ever-living 
"Body of Christ." The communion of the 
saints is no mere dogma. All the devout 
genius of the Church has been enlisted in 
the work of making it vivid and soul-en- 
trancing. We say of some few famous men 
that their names have become household 
words ; but the phrase is but faintly expres- 



12 "Members of One Body" 

sive of the sacred familiarity of those 
names which are repeated, generation after 
generation, in the hours of prayer. Who 
can estimate the power of the associations 
that cluster around them? Modern reform- 
ers talk much of the "solidarity of the 
race"; the ancient Church has in a meas- 
ure realized it. The individual entering 
it is no more "a stranger and an exile, but 
a fellow-citizen with the saints and of the 
household of God." 

The worship of the saints seems idola- 
trous to the Protestant, but it readily yields 
its finer meanings. For what is worship 
but unbounded admiration, leading one to 
devote himself absolutely to the service of 
the loved one? When with stern icono- 
clasm we have shattered the idols of 
self-love, and ceased altogether from our 
Mammon-worship, there will be time for us 
to turn our zeal against the worship of the 
saints; or perhaps then we may be pre- 
pared for the worship of larger ideals of 
manhood than have yet been received into 
the calendar of the Church. And so, too, 
the doctrine of apostolic succession needs 



Roman Catholicism 13 

only to be enlarged to be made true. It is 
a quaintly conventional expression of a uni- 
versal law. There are channels of grace 
which may be traced through the ages. 
Tradition has its place as well as intuition. 
The piety of to-day is the result of the 
piety of the past, and the institutions of 
religion are living links binding together 
the generations. 

Closely connected with the historic con- 
tinuity of the Catholic Church is its power 
of progress. We are indebted to it for its 
illustration of a great church adapting itself 
to ever changing conditions. When I speak 
of Catholicism as a progressive institution, 
both friends and foes may take exception to 
my words. The unchangeableness of the 
Church is a favorite thesis of many of its 
most zealous defenders. Founded on a 
rock, it resists, it is said, the surges of 
time. In its doctrine and ritual it pro- 
fesses to be always the same; and its bitter 
adversaries seize upon its words, and accept 
the superstition of immutability as some- 
thing well established. Yes, they say, the 
Roman Church is always the same. It 



14 "Members of One Body" 

hunted Giordano Bruno to the death; and it 
would do the same with every man of sci- 
ence to-day, if it had the power. The fagots 
and thumb-screws are only laid aside for 
the fit occasion, and the inquisitor lurks 
behind the placid mask of the parish priest. 
A Catholic prelate is supposed to be in- 
capable of disinterested patriotism. Do we 
not all know what Jesuitism is? The de- 
crees of the popes are never revoked, they 
are esteemed infallible. Therefore, the 
Church to-day must be held strictly re- 
sponsible for whatever it has at any time 
proclaimed. And it is further said that 
we need not go back to the past ages. See 
what Catholicism to-day is in Spain or in 
South America, and you will see what it 
aspires to be in these United States. 

You perceive the logic of this. No one 
argues that the Presbyterian General As- 
sembly would favor the burning of heretics 
because the Calvinists of Geneva once did 
so. Nor are the great missionary societies 
accused of seeking to conform American 
Christianity to the type which alone they 
are able to propagate in the South Sea 
Islands. 



Roman Catholicism 15 

Catholicism is thus treated because of its 
own ill-advised boast, but this boast has 
no justification in fact. The Church sur- 
vives because it is not immutable. It is a 
power in the nineteenth century because it 
is able to adapt itself to the thought and 
aspiration of the nineteenth century. It 
succeeds in America only in proportion as 
it becomes American. It may never have 
the courage to say, "I have been mistaken," 
— few churches have — but it is continually 
forgetting the things that are behind. An 
infallible authority is precluded from ac- 
knowledging a blunder. The only thing 
left for it is to forget it. That is what 
makes a progressive Catholic such a bad 
historian. 

I do not ignore the long warfare of the 
Church against science or its continual col- 
lisions with advancing thought. These 
collisions only prove that the huge corpora- 
tion has moved more slowly than the alert, 
unencumbered minds of individuals; but 
yet it has moved, and, in spite of much that 
has been reactionary, the movement has 
been, on the whole, an onward one. The 



1 6 "Members of One Body" 

Catholic Church in its astronomy stands 
to-day with Galileo rather than with the 
Inquisition. If the controversy of the six- 
teenth century were renewed, it would 
scarcely uphold Tetzel. If it would not 
favor the contention of Luther, it would at 
least give heed to the moderate counsels of 
Erasmus. The Protestant controversialist 
is unjust when he pictures the Church of 
Rome as so joined to its idols that reforma- 
tion must always come from without. No 
greater reformer ever lived than Gregory 
VII. Many of the councils have dealt 
unsparingly with old abuses. The founders 
of the monastic orders were all daring inno- 
vators in their day; yet they were not 
burned, but canonized. The leaders of 
the Church have been often quick to discern 
the signs of the times and to face new 
issues. Leo XIII. writes an encyclical let- 
ter on the labor question. Fancy Leo X. 
doing that : he did not know that there was 
a labor question. But the significance of 
the position of the Catholic Church lies 
deeper than this. Its doctrine of revelation 
contains a progressive element which is 



Roman Catholicism ij 

absent from Protestant orthodoxy. The 
Protestant in theory limits divine revela- 
tion to the Scriptures, and in practice nar- 
rows it still further to the summary of 
Biblical truth contained in his creed. The 
result is an unavoidable rigidity of thought. 
No room being left for expansion, freedom 
can only be obtained by a series of violent 
explosions. The Catholic avoids this diffi- 
culty; for he accepts the Church rather 
than the Bible as the chief medium of rev- 
elation. He thus may appeal to a living 
authority. The Church is not the custodian 
of a treasure which cannot be augmented, 
but it is itself the organ of the religious 
consciousness. There may be perpetual 
evolution, with no loss of divine authority. 
Those who give least credence to the 
claims of the Catholic Church to infallibil- 
ity find great suggestiveness in its underly- 
ing philosophy. The Protestant theory of 
authority in religion must either be ac- 
cepted or rejected in its entirety. It can- 
not be modified or enlarged without destroy- 
ing its meaning, but the Catholic idea may 
be expanded indefinitely. As the broad 



1 8 "Members of One Body" 

study of sociology takes the place of eccle- 
siastical history, the conception of human- 
ity as a living body will grow familiar. Its 
intuitive faiths, its unvarying moral laws, 
its growing experience, will be accepted as 
a part of the divine revelation, and given 
the same obedience now rendered to the 
decrees of councils and of popes. When 
this comes to pass, the Catholic idea will 
not be destroyed, but fulfilled. 

This brings us to that characteristic of 
the ancient Church which is its chief glory, 
and which is embodied in its name, — its 
catholicity. It is interesting to observe 
how the extremes of Christendom unite in 
their ideals. On the one side are the 
Catholics, and on the other the Liberal 
Christians; and yet the words "liberal" 
and "catholic" are synonymes. I turn to 
the dictionary, and find "catholic" defined 
as "universal, embracing all, wide extend- 
ing, not narrow-minded, partial, or bigoted; 
possessing a mind that appreciates all 
truth; free from prejudice; liberal." 

That this ideal of inclusiveness has been 
fully realized by the Catholic Church I do 



Roman Catholicism 19 

not believe. If it had been, there would 
be no excuse for our remaining outside. 
But it has been partly realized, and that in 
a direction in which Protestant liberalism 
has, for the most part, failed. In attending 
a convention of avowed liberalists, who 
were seeking a basis for religious union, I 
was struck with the fact that all kinds of 
ideas were represented, but only one kind 
of people. All who took part in the proceed- 
ings were persons who approached religion 
from the intellectual side. The Catholic 
Church has sometimes been inhospitable to 
new ideas, but it has always offered a wide 
welcome to all sorts of people. Its ideal is 
in striking contrast to that of Puritanism. 
To the Puritan the church is a little com- 
pany of the elect separated from the rest of 
the world. A standard is set up by which 
each individual is to be tried. The smaller 
the sect, the less the variation usually al- 
lowed from the received type. This tem- 
per survives the rationalizing process, and 
is seen even in our so-called liberal 
churches; and we find some of them still 
taking pride in the thought that they are 



20 "Members of One Body" 

composed exclusively of the "best people" 
of their respective communities. This 
"leaven of the Pharisees" appears in all 
forms of sectarianism. Indeed, the word 
" Pharisee " (separated) is but another name 
for the self-absorbed sectarian. The Cath- 
olic Church is broadly tolerant of human 
nature. It has a place for its philosophers 
and moralists; but it understands, also, the 
needs of those to whom religion, if it comes 
at all, must come, not through the intel- 
lect, but through the emotions and the 
senses. It has a message to the eye and 
the ear as well as to the reason; it has 
learned how to overawe the barbarian by its 
pageantry; it challenges the admiration of 
the soldier by its matchless discipline; it 
appeals to the artistic temperament, for 
Catholicism is the poetry of Christianity, 
as Protestantism is its prose; it captivates 
the imagination of youth, and stimulates 
the most romantic spiritual ambition; 
and, when strength and earthly hope are 
dead, it offers a refuge and a ministry of 
consolation. It is pre-eminently the relig- 
ion of the sorrowing, not teaching them to 



Roman Catholicism 21 

underrate their sorrow or explain it away, 
but investing it with divine meaning. Its 
ritual is a drama unrivalled in its intensity, 
leading the worshipper by slow, sad steps 
through all the "stations of the cross," to 
find at once the symbol of suffering and of 
salvation. 

It is characteristic of the Catholic 
Church that its splendor does not drive 
away the poor. A costly Protestant church 
suggests a rich man's house; but the mag- 
nificence of the cathedral suggests the glori- 
ous vault of the sky, beneath which all are 
equal. An Italian writer has well said, "It 
is a place where the homeless and hungry, 
driven from the rich man's table, may pray 
amid marbles and gold, as in a kingdom 
where he is not disdained, amid a pomp and 
splendor that does not humiliate him, that 
even honors and comforts his misery." 

In like manner, the Roman hierarchy, 
rising rank above rank, has done much for 
the sentiment of equality and fraternity. 
In ages when the nobly born felt that they 
belonged almost to another race from the 
common people, the Church offered an op- 



22 " Members of One Body" 

portunity for the poor man to gain distinc- 
tion. In the never-to-be-forgotten scene at 
Canossa we may now see only an exhibi- 
tion of priestly arrogance. But the heart 
of many a mediaeval peasant must have beat 
proudly as he heard the tale of how the em- 
peror, clad as a penitent, shivered for three 
wintry days before the door of Hildebrand, 
the son of a village carpenter; and, when 
Thomas a Becket and Wolsey met on equal 
terms with the Plantagenets and the Tu- 
dors, it was not forgotten that these great 
churchmen were great commoners. 

We Americans boast much over the fact 
that there are no impassable barriers be- 
tween the Presidency and the remotest coun- 
try school-house. But in the darkest of the 
feudal ages the aspiring peasant lad might 
cherish still more dazzling ambitions. The 
secular aristocracy was closed against him; 
but there was a spiritual aristocracy, and 
in that he might rise from rank to rank, 
till at last he might look down on kings 
and emperors. 

With all its great services, however, the 
Catholic Church made one mistake from 



Roman Catholicism 23 

which it has not yet recovered. At a criti- 
cal time in its history it proved false to 
its own principle of Catholicity. In the 
early years of the sixteenth century it had 
no more devoted servant than Martin 
Luther. 

If the pope had been a wise man, he 
would have called the German reformer to 
Rome, and said: "Brother Martin, a new day 
has dawned, and we must make ready for 
its work. The dust and cobwebs of time 
have gathered over the altar. The windows 
of the Church are so begrimed that the 
light of heaven can scarcely struggle 
through. The Church must be thoroughly 
cleansed; and you, with your burly 
strength, are the man to do it. We have 
had crusading orders and mendicant and 
teaching orders. Now let us organize the 
Order of the Holy Broom, which shall 
sweep away all these old abuses." 

But Leo X. was not a wise man ; and so, 
being disturbed in his private plans, he 
drove Brother Martin out of the Church. 
And Brother Martin, not being allowed to 
work from within, did the only thing left 



24 "Members of One Body" 

for him: he threw down the broom, and tak- 
ing up the hammer began to batter down 
the church walls; and so the great Refor- 
mation culminated in the great schism. 

From that day the Church ceased to be 
truly Catholic, and became Roman Cath- 
olic; but, though dismembered, it still 
lives, and its ideal universality, though so 
imperfectly realized, is its greatest charm. 
Its relation to the modern world is like that 
of the Holy Roman Empire to the Middle 
Ages. It is at once the survival of a past 
greatness and the prophecy of a larger 
greatness in the future. When the world- 
empire of the Ccesars had been overthrown, 
its idea still haunted the mind. Amid the 
political chaos there was the vision of a 
great power strong enough to compel order. 
In its old form the empire was never to be 
re-established; but the very name kept 
alive the thought of universal law. The 
dream of the world-empire may yet find its 
fulfilment in a world federation. 

And so the word "Catholic," narrowed 
though it has been in its application, is a 
power for good. It rebukes petty sectarian 



Roman Catholicism 25 

zeal, and recalls the high ambition to build 
a universal church. Looking at it in one 
way, the Roman Catholic Church seems but 
a shadow of its former self; but, from an- 
other standpoint, it appears as "a shadow of 
good things to come." It has nothing to 
fear from sectarian animosity. Its con- 
queror must have "its secret in his brain." 
It will yield at last only to a catholicity 
larger than its own. It stands like a 
mountain, and sends forth the mountain's 
challenge : — 

" Let him heed who can or will, 
Enchantment fixed me here, 
To stand the hurts of time until 
In mightier chant I disappear." 

Some day that mightier chant will be 
heard, as worshippers of every name unite 
in repeating, with fuller meaning, "We be- 
lieve in the Holy Catholic Church." 



CALVINISM 



II. 

CALVINISM 

WHAT has Calvinism done for the 
world? In order to answer the 
question, we must first ask, What is Cal- 
vinism? I might refer to many ponderous 
volumes in which theological definitions are 
given; but, when you had read them all, 
you might still be as far as ever from the 
soul which once animated these "bodies of 
divinity." Would you see Calvinism in 
the flesh, turn to Bunyan : — 

"As I walked through the wilderness of 
the world, ... I saw a man clothed with 
rags, standing in a certain place, with his 
face from his own house, a book in his hand 
and a great burden upon his back. I 
looked, and saw him open the book, and read 
therein; and, as he read, he wept and 
trembled. And, not being able longer to 
contain, he brake out with a lamentable cry, 
saying, k What shall I do?'" 



30 "Members of One Body " 

The world a wilderness; the man stand- 
ing with his back to his own house, with a 
great burden of sin weighing him down, and 
yet with the infallible word of God in his 
hands, — we must understand what all these 
things mean if we would understand what 
Calvinism was when it was a living power. 
How that "lamentable cry" rings in our 
ears! It is the cry of a soul conscious of 
its absolute depravity, brought face to face 
with the transcendent vision of divine 
purity. What is Calvinism? Perhaps it 
would be better to use the past tense; for 
that Calvinism which has been such a 
mighty force has- of late been so modified 
as to lose many of its early characteristics. 
Calvinism was the very sternest form which 
Christianity has ever assumed, and in its 
day the most candid. It was the belief that 
the world is in ruins, that man is by nature 
utterly depraved and destined to endless 
torment, and that all this evil was decreed 
in the councils of eternity. It was the be- 
lief that against this, our frightful destiny, 
we struggle in vain : our utmost endeavors 
are powerless; some few God chooses, not 



Calvinism 31 

for anything which they have done or are, 
but for the mere pleasure of his own will, 
for what he does, he deigns no other 
answer than that it is for his own glory: 
"The rest of mankind God was pleased, ac- 
cording to the unsearchable counsel of his 
own will, whereby he extendeth or with- 
holdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory 
of his sovereign power over his creatures, to 
pass by, and to ordain them to dishonor and 
wrath for their sin, to the praise of his 
glorious justice." 

Can any good come from such a religion 
as this? Come and see. Calvinism is like 
that gloomy forest through which Dante 
wandered, when he the straight way had 
lost: "Even to think of it renews the fear: 
death itself could scarcely be more bitter." 
But we may imitate him: "To disclose the 
good that there I found, I will tell what 
else was mine to see." That some good 
has come from Calvinism every one must 
admit who is willing to use the New Testa- 
ment test, — "By their fruits ye shall know 
them." 

Reasoning upon general principles, we 



32 "Members of One Body" 

might say that a religious system such as 
I have described, based upon the doctrine 
of arbitrary sovereignty, in which God was 
conceived of as a despot seated on his 
throne, and man was spoken of as a mere 
"worm of the dust," would be one which 
would naturally ally itself with all that was 
reactionary and despotic in civilization. 
As a matter of fact, this has not been so. 
Calvinism has been everywhere the stern 
nurse of human freedom. It came not from 
despotic Rome, but had its birth in repub- 
lican Geneva; and the same men who have 
declared most unflinchingly the arbitrary 
character of divine government have been 
those who have fought most bravely for 
human liberty. Follow the stream of Cal- 
vinistic influence through the civilized 
world, and what do we find? When France 
was half Calvinist, France was half free. 
Louis XIV. knew full well that the greatest 
enemies to the unlimited despotism which 
he would establish were the French Calvin- 
ists, the fellow-believers as well as the 
fellow-countrymen of Calvin. So he with- 
drew the edict of toleration, and that which 






Calvinism 33 

has been France's loss has been the gain of 
the rest of Europe. Follow the struggle 
since then in England and America, and 
you will find in the very forefront of the 
battle for constitutional liberty men with 
French names. The descendants of the 
Huguenots may have forgotten their fathers' 
creed; but, wherever they have gone, they 
have carried with them the instinctive love 
of liberty and the hatred of all oppression. 
Follow that Calvinistic race which we call 
Scotch-Irish in their migrations to the New 
World, carrying with them, as most of them 
have, the Calvinistic creed, carrying, as all 
of them have, the Calvinistic inheritance, 
and you will find them, too, fighting always 
on the side of civil and religious freedom. 
For the brief space of time when England's 
Westminster Hall was freed from the 
shadow of royalty, one notable event hap- 
pened. Then the Westminster Confession 
of Faith was born, and not by an accident, 
did it come in that moment of civil liberty. 
We read those words of the old Calvinists 
in which they declare that the will of man 
is feeble, that the struggling of man can do 



34 "Members of One Body" 

nothing, and that all comes by an arbitrary 
decree to us, the worms of the dust; and 
we say, as we read, "That is a fit creed for 
slaves to accept and to follow." Turn to 
the actual fact, and who were these men 
who professed this creed and who spoke 
thus disparagingly of themselves? Who 
were these men that fought this battle of 
Calvinism in Europe and America? Ad- 
miral Coligny, William the Silent, John 
Knox who never feared the face of man, 
sturdy Miles Standish and Oliver Cromwell, 
— these were the Calvinists. What glorious 
worms of the dust these were ! Would that 
our thought of the dignity of humanity 
could bring to the world such men, ready 
to do all and to dare all! Would that, 
when we speak of the freedom of the 
will, we could nerve the will with such 
divine courage as theirs! These men, 
who talked a language we scarce can under- 
stand, who looked at the world through 
eyes other than ours, may have been worms 
of the dust; but they made great mis- 
takes who thought they were the kind 
of worms that could be trodden on. They 



Calvinism 3 5 

were the men everywhere who made this 
free civilization of ours, and it is into 
their blood-bought heritage that we enter. 
We may disagree with them, we may say 
they were mistaken; but we dare not de- 
spise them or despise their thought. 

The creed of Calvinism, as I read it, 
seems to mean the captivity of the human 
mind; and yet, as I recall the deeds of 
these old Calvinists, the bold Hebrew 
words come to me, "They have taken their 
captivity captive." The very thoughts 
which seem to us, not looking at their 
deeds, to mean despotism meant the arms 
by which freedom was achieved; and so I 
come to the conclusion that there must be 
something more in Calvinism than with a 
superficial view we have seen, — that there 
must be a deeper meaning, a more abiding 
spirit, in that which wrought such great 
things for us all. I cannot believe the old 
theosophic doctrine that our personalities 
are not truly our own, but that life goes on 
through successive reincarnations of the in- 
dividual ; but this much I do see : that ideas 
are continually reincarnated, that now in 



36 "Members of One Body" 

one form and now in another the great es- 
sential powers of the human mind come 
into play, their earlier life all but forgot- 
ten, and, as a new birth in the realm of 
humanity, the old spirit reappears. So 
life forces are continually reincarnated, 
failing in the old religion, coming again in 
the new form. And so manly courage and 
sincerity are born anew in the religious 
world. What we call Calvinism was the 
old Roman Stoicism born again into Chris- 
tianity. It was the bravest, most logical 
and fearless form in which orthodox Chris- 
tianity has ever been manifested. That 
which seems to me the essential thing in 
Calvinism, and that which is eternal, is the 
intellectual sincerity which belonged to it 
in its early days, and which gave it the in- 
fluence it had over the strongest minds of 
Christendom. It was this absolute devo- 
tion to truth, as then it was seen, that gave 
it power. 

There have been many forms of religion 
which have sought simply to find the beau- 
tiful things and pleasant things in life, and, 
taking them, to make them sacred, and, ac- 



Calvinism 37 

cepting what was but half-truth, to make out 
of that a beautiful faith. It is the faith of 
tender sentiment. It is the faith of those 
who are shielded from the world. It is 
never the faith of strong men, never the 
faith of warriors, never the faith of states- 
men, who have to meet face to face the evil 
as well as the good. This world of ours is 
not altogether a pleasant place. Much as 
we may believe that the heart of the world is 
love, yet there are claws and teeth to nat- 
ure. There is blood and strife and sorrow 
here, and serious men know it; and, when 
religion is serious, it faces the fact. Re- 
ligion is not always serious, and not always 
in the serious mood do men go to the place 
of worship. And so we have beautiful rit- 
ualisms and beautiful half rationalisms, and 
so we have prophets who say smooth things, 
and do not dare to face the ultimate conse- 
quences of their own creeds; and so under 
pomp of ceremony the harder facts of life 
are simply put aside, and in the courts of 
religion men come to say, All is well, even 
though they know that the enemy is at the 
gate. Even Luther himself, with all his 



38 "Members of One Body " 

moral fearlessness, had not that intellectual 
courage which the times demanded. Some 
of his compromises were at the expense of 
consistency. Calvin, the young lawyer of 
France, brought his clear mind to bear on 
the problems of theology; and this is what 
he said in effect to the men of the sixteenth 
century : — 

" Friends, let us be absolutely candid, let 
us take our religion seriously. We have 
broken away from the authority of church 
tradition, and appealed to the Word of God. 
Let us not be like children, choosing only 
what pleases us; but let us face the whole 
truth. On some things we agree. We be- 
lieve, or say that we believe, that every 
word of these Scriptures is infallible, and 
that here we have the sole authority in re- 
ligion. Let us then take it as it is, and 
follow implicitly where it leads. This 
Bible of ours has many beautiful things in 
it. It speaks of the divine love, but just 
as surely does it speak of the divine hate. 
It says that God has hated some of his 
creatures with such quenchless hatred that 
he will follow them with burning torments 



Calvinism 39 

for all eternity. Their lives will be pro- 
longed infinitely, in order that his infinite 
wrath may be manifested. 

"We know, or think we know, the power 
and freedom of our own wills; but back of 
the human will is law, and back of law is 
the higher will, the Eternal. You say that 
God wills some to be saved and dwell in 
light, and there are others who are not 
saved. We all believe that. But God 
does not will the destruction of any, you 
say. Ah! seriously, now, is not that in- 
volved in our doctrine? If there is that 
eternal hell and there are those that shall 
go thither, can you evade the thought that 
God sent them there? God made them to 
suffer. God created them for that. Hor- 
rible thought, you say. Yes, to me, also; 
for I am a man. To me, also, it is cause 
for trembling, because I know not who are 
those decreed. But it is written so. God 
says so; and, if we are to obey, if we are to 
believe, let us have no half-measures. Let 
us face the ultimate reality, let us see the 
worst. Man sins, man always has sinned: 
do you say he can do differently? I tell 



40 "Membei'S of One Body " 

you that his life is just as much bound up 
in the universal life as the movements of 
the atoms and their attractions. Struggle 
as he will, he cannot help it. And yet he 
suffers, yet he is accounted guilty, yet he is 
to be condemned eternally for that which he 
cannot help. Unjust, you say? Yes. So 
I feel, for I am a man; and yet this Word 
says so. God says so. God made the 
world, made us. Why did he do it? I do 
not know. I only declare the fact. I only 
speak to you as the man of science speaks 
in bringing together the result of his study. 
He says this is so. You ask him why: he 
says, 'I do not know, no man knows why.' 
And yet we know God is just, and base our 
life on that. It is better to believe that 
than to doubt it. So I believe that beneath 
this great injustice, this apparent unreason- 
ableness, there is the reason and justice 
that is infinite." Such was the word of 
Calvinism. Do you wonder that men who 
believed that conquered half Europe? Do 
you wonder that men who believed that 
were not afraid of what King Philip and his 
inquisition could do? They had already 



Calvinism 41 

faced the very darkest side of things, and 
yet they believed; and, though reason pro- 
tested, though the heart bled, yet they 
trusted God. Do you think it was an easy 
thing for Jonathan Edwards to preach that 
terrible sermon on "Sinners in the Hands 
of an Angry God " ? You say, when you 
read it, "What a hard-hearted man he was!" 
I say rather what a brave man he was, who, 
believing that, dared say it, and say it 
simply because to him it was true. 

Such was Calvinism when it was not a 
creed to be coolly revised, but was received 
as a statement of the ultimate realities of 
existence. It was not a bugbear to fright 
the ignorant, but a pitiless deduction from 
universally accepted premises. The Cal- 
vinist differed from other Christians of the 
day only in that his logic was more inex- 
orable. He saw and stated all that is 
involved in the evangelical scheme of salva- 
tion. As long as the fundamental assump- 
tions of this scheme were unquestioned, 
Calvinism ruled over the best minds of the 
world. 

Weak men and women would sav, "Oh, 



42 "Members of One Body" 

but it is not pleasant, it is not beautiful, it 
is not popular." "We go with religion," 
Bunyan's man of the world would say, 
"when she walks in the sunshine in her sil- 
ver slippers." "Nay," said Christian and 
Hopeful, "we go with religion in all 
weathers, and wait not for wind and tide." 
These were the men who walked through 
the Valley of Humiliation, and who found a 
key that unlocked at last for them even the 
dungeon of Giant Despair, who saw the 
worst that human thought could give, who 
faced that which made weaker men despair, 
and yet found hope and courage even to the 
end. 

And this seriousness of Calvinism which 
made it a power is seen in the kind of 
questions which Calvinism asked. The 
most characteristic work of Calvinism, and 
that which remains longest, is the Shorter 
Catechism of the Westminster divines. 
Many of the answers to that catechism are 
strangely obsolete now. They no longer 
commend themselves to the kind of minds 
that made that catechism, but commend 
themselves rather to those who are blind to 



Calvinism 4 3 

the facts of the present day. But the ques- 
tions remain, and the questions have been 
the power which have made Calvinism po- 
tent among thinking men. It is not easy 
to ask great questions; and much of church 
religion has often consisted in evading 
great questions rather than in asking them. 
Not so with Calvinism. The questions of 
the Westminster Catechism are the ques- 
tions of the Sphinx. They voice the eter- 
nal questionings of the soul of man : they 
challenge the intellect of the ages. It is 
because the questions were so great that the 
answers no longer satisfy. "What is the 
chief end of man? What is God? What 
are the decrees of God? How doth God ex- 
ecute his decrees? What is effectual call- 
ing?" 

Think what it meant for generations of 
men to be confronted with such questions. 
Other forms of religion may be uninflu- 
enced by scientific discoveries, because they 
do not occupy a field wherein they can come 
in conflict with serious thought. But Cal- 
vinism in its solemn truth-telling cannot 
evade the issue which new truth brings. 



44 "Members of One Body" 

The man who asks, " What is the chief end 
of man ? " has asked the fundamental ques- 
tion of ethics. He cannot but be influ- 
enced by every step in ethical development. 
He who to-day asks, " How doth God exe- 
cute his decrees ? " cannot be indifferent to 
what natural science has to say on the sub- 
ject. The great influence of Calvinism has 
been to set men thinking. It has given 
them the courage of their convictions. It 
has exalted logic, and accustomed men to 
use it in religion. We need not then be 
surprised that, where Calvinism has been 
most intense, the old Calvinistic creed has 
at length broken down. It is the spirit 
bursting the bonds of its forms. So Cal- 
vin's Geneva has long been the seat of lib- 
eralism, and the new theology gained its 
first triumphs in Puritan Boston. Nothing 
could be wider apart than the answers of 
Emerson from those of the Westminster 
divines ; but the questionings are the same. 
Like a true child of the Calvinists, he is 
still pondering 

" The fate of the man-child, 
The meaning of man." 



Calvinism 45 

And, when the old answers do not satisfy, 

he does not turn away, but waits in reverent 

silence. 

" Alway it asketh, asketh ; 
And each answer is a lie. 

Ask on, thou clothed eternity; 
Time is the false reply." 

As in Bunyan we have Calvinism in the 
flesh, so in these lines we have Calvinism as 
a disembodied spirit. The solid mass of 
dogma has dissolved; but, in its place, we 
recognize a certain spiritual attitude and 
expectation. The soul of the old faith 
remains. It has learned the meekness of 
wisdom through its past disappointments, 
but it has lost nothing of its serious pur- 
pose. Baffled for the time in its attempts 
to solve the mystery of its own destiny, 
it loses nothing of heart or hope, but still 
believes that eternity contains the answers 
to the eternal questionings of the heart. 

We may trace the influence of the austere 
discipline of Calvinism upon all the great 
religious leaders of our time. Its good is 
"a good diffused." Here, rather than in 



46 "Members of One Body" 

the professedly Calvinistic churches, we 
may follow the line of spiritual succession; 
for it would seem that the brave old spirit 
has in our day almost forsaken its old tene- 
ments. The recent attempts made to revise 
the Westminster Confession are significant, 
for they betray the full extent of the eccle- 
siastical degeneracy. To soften here and 
there a phrase, to conceal the full force of 
an argument, to leave vague some harsh de- 
duction from an admitted premise, to evade 
a difficulty rather than to squarely meet it, 
to seek plausibility rather than reality, 
these are congenial tasks for Mr. By-ends 
of Fair Speech and his good friends, Mr. 
Smooth-man, Mr. Facing-both-ways, and 
Mr. Anything. For compromise with prin- 
ciple comes naturally to Mr. By-ends, as 
he tells us, "My great-grandfather was a 
waterman, looking one way and rowing an- 
other; and I got most of my estate by the 
same occupation." But this fits not the 
temper of the man with the burden on his 
back and the book in his hand. By sad ex- 
perience, he has learned to distrust easy 
solutions of great problems, and hastens on 



Calvinism 47 

through the difficult to the true. "Then 
Christian and Hopeful outwent them again, 
and went on till they came to a delicate 
plain called Ease, where they went through 
with much content ; but that plain was but 
narrow, so they were quickly got over it." 

He who has caught the spirit of the old 
Calvinism will not linger long on the "del- 
icate plain," where churchmen are engaged 
in smoothing down a creed which at heart 
they have ceased to believe. The only 
question for him is, Is it true? If it is, let 
it be preached in its integrity, nor let its 
sternest outlines be concealed. Let the 
whole counsel of God be proclaimed with- 
out equivocation. But, if it is not found 
true, when subjected to the severest tests, 
let us hasten onward, no matter what val- 
leys of humiliation or hills of difficulty or 
doubting castles may await us. 

And all of us must catch this spirit if we 
would enter into the heritage which the 
men of old have left us. We may not 
share their doctrines; but, if we would do 
our part, we must share their sincerity and 
earnestness. The old problems come to us 



48 "Members of One Body " 

in different forms, and our answers must be 
in different phraseology. But of one thing 
we may be certain, and that is that only 
when we face our problems with a courage 
as indomitable as that of the early Calvin- 
ists will any worthy answer be possible. 

The world has yet work for men who, 
facing the worst, yet believe in the best, 
and who, looking up to the Eternal, can say, 
"Though he slay me, yet will I trust him." 
The world needs men who believe in their 
own "effectual calling " to do God's work, 
and who are willing to do it in obedience to 
those great laws which are not of their own 
making. The religion of the future will be 
more humane, more tender, more rational, 
than the old Calvinism ; but it must not be 
less earnest and devoted. 



METHODISM 



III. 

METHODISM 

THE inhabitants of the valleys of South- 
ern California, when asked to tell us 
the reason for their climatic blessedness, 
give equal credit to the mountains and the 
sea. The great ranges that lie behind, 
they tell us, cut off the chilly breezes of 
the north, and the warm ocean currents 
temper the winter air. 

We have already considered one of the 
causes which have modified the religious 
climate of our age. It is that rugged 
mountain range that lies behind us, which 
we call Calvinism. Let us now consider 
what we owe to that warm ocean current 
which is known as Methodism. 

To understand Methodism, we must go 
back to its beginning. Let us go into the 
middle of the eighteenth century, and enter 
the parish church of Epworth. The curate 



52 "Members of 0?te Body" 

is preaching on a very popular theme of 
that day, "The Evils of Enthusiasm." As 
the congregation goes out of the church, it 
is whispered that the son of the former 
minister, who, being suspected of the sin 
of enthusiasm, is forbidden the use of his 
father's pulpit, is to preach that evening in 
the churchyard. 

What follows let John Wesley himself 
tell: "That evening at six o'clock I came 
and found such a congregation as I believe 
Epworth never saw before. I stood near 
the east end of the church upon my father's 
tombstone, and I cried aloud, 'The king- 
dom of God is not meat and drink, but 
righteousness and peace and joy in the 
Holy Ghost.' ... As I preached, on every 
side as with one accord they lifted up their 
voices and cried aloud. Several dropped 
down as dead; but many soon lifted up 
their heads with joy and broke into thanks- 
giving, assured that now they had the de- 
sire of their souls, even the forgiveness of 
sins." A strange phenomenon that to the 
good curate, and clearly against the peace 
and dignity of the Church of England; for, 



Methodism 5 3 

if the kingdom of heaven is not meat and 
drink, or at least is not intended princi- 
pally as a means of providing meat and 
drink for the reverend clergy and their fam- 
ilies, then there must be something wrong 
with the Church of England, then the king- 
dom of heaven must be something different 
from the Church, — an idea not to be allowed. 
It was the age when Jonathan Swift was the, 
dean of St. Patrick's and when the Rev. 
Laurence Sterne divided his time between 
writing sermons and his "Sentimental Jour- 
ney," and when Fielding found in too many 
a country parish models for his earthly- 
minded parson, Trulliber. It was, in 
short, in the very middle of the great en- 
lightened eighteenth century, — a time when 
it was understood that religion henceforth 
was to be tolerated; but it was not to be 
treated any longer as an elemental force, 
but as an elegant though a somewhat tire- 
some conventionality. 

On one point all sensible men were 
agreed, — that there should be no enthusiasm 
in religion. One great commandment over- 
shadowed all else: "Let all things be done 



54 "Members of One Body " 

decently and in order." Next to this was 
another great commandment : " The Powers 
that be are ordained of God." The Church 
was the patient Griselda married to the 
State, and she must have no will of her 
own. The brave old text about the gospel 
being "the power of God" was not often 
quoted, nor was it much believed. 

One of the popular sermons of the day, 
published by a certain London doctor of 
divinity, has this title: "The Nature, Folly, 
Sin, and Danger of being Righteous Over- 
much." The intellect of the Church was 
then engaged largely in discussing the 
"evidences of Christianity," but it is char- 
acteristic of the time that these evidences 
were all in the past. It never seemed to 
enter the heads of these wise churchmen 
that religion might possibly be self-evi- 
dencing. The evidences were all docu- 
mentary. Long ago miracles happened, it 
was believed; and God spake to men, and 
then ceased to speak. Now faith consists 
in accepting the testimony of the Fathers as 
it has been preserved for us in the Church. 
Fielding tells us of the religion of Chaplain 



Methodism , 5 5 

Thwackum, and of his arguments with the 
heretic, Square, and he says the clergyman 
"decided everything by authority; but he 
always used the Scriptures as the lawyer 
doth his Coke upon Littleton, where the 
comment is of equal authority with the text." 
It was into this age that John Wes- 
ley came, and with him the phenomenon of 
Methodism. Beginning in a little band in 
Oxford, it spread soon over the United 
Kingdom and the world. Men were aston- 
ished to find that in religion the age of mir- 
acles had not passed, that still in lowliest 
men and women there was something, call 
it faith, call it what you will, which re- 
sponded to the man speaking with that 
greatest of all authority, — the authority of 
an inward conviction of the truth of his own 
message. The one thing which was greatly 
characteristic of Methodism, and which dif- 
ferentiated it from the religion of the time, 
was not its doctrine. Wesley had no new 
doctrine to preach. Such doctrine as he 
did preach was in many respects less ad- 
vanced than the best thought of his time. 
He believed in witches, and was sur- 



$6 (l Members of One Body " 

rounded all the time by a supernatural at- 
mosphere. His teachings were often nar- 
row, and not adapted to the very finest 
minds; but his power lay in this, — that he 
had grasped, and as no other man in Eng- 
land had grasped, the idea that religion is 
not a doctrine at all, not something to be 
held apart from the man, but it is the 
power of a personality consciously touched 
by the Eternal. He preached the necessity 
of a personal experience of religion. Ac- 
cording to the scheme of Calvinism, the 
destiny of the soul was determined in the 
councils of eternity before the foundation 
of the world; and the individual must wait 
till the far judgment day before he can 
surely know what his destiny is. To Wes- 
ley the past and future eternities were 
crowded into one decisive moment. In that 
moment the man might choose God and 
enjoy him. He need not wait for death 
in order to enter heaven, nor for the judg- 
ment day to be sure of his salvation. The 
whole gospel is translated into the present 
tense. All the divine promises may be 
verified by an act of consciousness. 



Methodism 5 7 

For its emphasis upon feeling Metho- 
dism has been criticised, and to a certain 
extent justly. Its introspection has some- 
times been morbid, and its desire for per- 
sonal salvation has sometimes been selfish. 

But at heart Wesley was right. When 
he came back from his ill-starred voyage to 
America, whither he went to convert the 
Indians, he said that the one result of it all 
was to convince him that, whereas he had 
gone forth to convert the Indians, he had 
not been converted himself. Wesley was 
right in thinking that no man can help 
others any further than he has himself been 
helped. No man can give to others any 
higher religion than he has himself experi- 
enced. He may talk about it, preach about 
it, define it, but never can he help another 
soul to any higher level than that on which 
he himself stands; and, in seeing this, 
Wesley differed from all the self-compla- 
cent parsons of England, who imagined that 
by preaching the articles of their Church 
and living as they pleased they were doing 
God's work, and were his ministers. 

But, though it began in introspection, 



58 "Members of One Body" 

Methodism has been eminently social in its 
development. Wesley grasped the thought 
that righteousness, peace, and joy in the 
Holy Ghost might spread through a whole 
nation as by contagion. The first thing 
was to find some faithful souls who, 
though they might not be able to define re- 
ligion, had experienced it. These men he 
commissioned; and they went up and down 
through England, to the coal mines and the 
furnaces, to all places where men were 
herded together, and told what God had 
done for them. And rude hearts were 
touched, and vast multitudes responded to 
the word of faith. This miracle happened 
in England a century ago, and the influence 
of that great revival has spread through all 
the world. There is not a corner of the 
civilized world that has not been touched 
by this new manifestation of Christianity. 

What do we owe to Methodism? That is 
a hard question to answer. Much easier 
would it be to answer the other question, 
What do we not owe to Methodism? Meth- 
odism in the churches which Wesley 
founded, or rather which grew unintention- 



Methodism 59 

ally out of those simple societies which he 
established, is the most powerful ecclesias- 
tical organization to-day in Protestantism, 
the one most full of vitality. But these 
Methodist societies are simply as the wire 
along which the electric energy travels; but 
the energy which charged that wire is too 
great for it to carry, and so it has found 
other conductors, and it has touched all 
churches, all organizations of the religious 
world. Even our Unitarian churches have 
been astonished and transformed when it 
has touched them with a new idea of what 
liberal Christianity may be. New England 
Unitarianism is simply a developed Calvin- 
ism, coming from a people characterized by 
the Calvinistic temper, seeking first for an 
opinion, a clear statement, rather than an 
experience. When we wish to broaden out, 
we broaden out according to the Calvinistic 
method, by trying to revise our statements. 
We follow in our development of liberalism 
intellectual lines. The text we love most 
is, "The truth shall make you free." A 
great text that ; for the truth does make us 
free, if we follow it far enough. But it is 



60 "Members of One Body" 

a long way sometimes. A minister came 
to the family of Jonathan Edwards. When 
he went away, he said, "I suspect that Mrs. 
Edwards has found a shorter way to heaven 
than her husband." So I suspect that 
Methodism finds a shorter way to true lib- 
eralism than the intellectual way which the 
Calvinist, by inheritance or by creed, must 
of necessity follow. "The truth shall 
make you free," is a great text; but here is 
an equally great one: "Where the spirit of 
the Lord is, there is liberty." There is 
liberty without defining it. There is lib- 
erty as a fact and as an experience. We 
Unitarians hardly knew what the possibili- 
ties of genial, warm-loving fellowship were 
until the Methodist Robert Collyer came 
among us. 

The liberal ministers of Boston preached 
long and well against intolerance, showing 
how unscriptural and how unreasonable it 
was. And at length the old dogmatism 
burst its shell; but it was, like the opening 
of the chestnut burr, accelerated by frost. 
But the ejaculatory prayer of Father Tay- 
lor, "Lord, save us from bigotry and bad 






Methodism 61 

vest which is worse," was 
more effective than all their arguments. 
That was characteristic of Methodism. 
The word of Wesley was, "Preach not 
against opinions, but against sins." When 
a Methodist comes to see that bigotry is a 
sin, he fights against it in the same fervent, 
whole-souled way in which he fights against 
bad rum. 

The influence of Methodism was powerful 
in making the great political and social 
revolution that was inevitable in England a 
peaceful one. A writer in the early part of 
this century laments the fact that Method- 
ism taught the working classes the secret 
of organized effort. Its class meetings 
were training-schools for the trades-unions. 
In this social education we now see a great 
work for good. 

The eighteenth century felt beneath all 
its conventionality the incoming of a great 
wave. In France, where religion had lost 
its force, the wave came on, and broke in 
terror on the land. 

Go to England at that same time, and 
you see many of the same conditions. The 



62 "Members of One Body" 

working class has become conscious of it- 
self. Great multitudes, thirty thousand 
sometimes in one place, come together to 
listen to the popular orators. But who are 
the orators of the mob, and what are they 
saying? They are men of faith; and they 
are preaching not the rights of man, but the 
duties of men. In the presence of these 
great duties all social distinctions fade 
away; and the sentiment of equality and 
fraternity springs up of necessity. There 
must be liberty, too; but these preachers 
say it must come through the means of a 
strict discipline, for it is freedom from sin 
that is desired. It was strange doctrine 
to preach to a mob, but it was believed. 
"Be ye perfect as God is perfect." And it 
was true doctrine; for only through perfect 
manhood can perfect freedom come. The 
age of the rights of man must come. 
There must be Chartism and reform bills 
and the long struggle for social privilege; 
but was it not a great thing that so many 
people grew into a consciousness of their 
own rights through their new consciousness 
of God? It is a great debt that we owe to 



Methodism 63 

Methodism for its work in preparing the 
way for the new government by the people. 
There is not time to follow the ramifica- 
tions of its influence. It has been influ- 
ential in the abolition of slavery, in the 
work of prison reform and of universal edu- 
cation. It has been a power coming from 
the masses of the people, and making not 
only for larger rights, but for larger means 
of grace. It has developed the true fellow- 
ship, which is the actual grasping of the 
brother's hand, and not the mere talking 
about it. 

As to Methodism as an organic fact, what 
shall I say? Only this, — that it is some- 
thing which is so good that one cannot help 
wondering why it is not better. It is a 
great treasure which is in earthen vessels, 
but the trouble is that people are apt to 
value the vessels more than the treasure. 
Wesley had all the defects of his qualities 
and the limitations which belong to a pop- 
ular leader. The Methodist discipline con- 
tains much that is petty and irritating, and 
which almost makes us forget how glorious 
is the spirit behind it. With all his 



64 "Members of One Body " 

abounding humanity, Wesley did not reach 
all sorts and conditions of men. When he 
went to Scotland, he found the people not 
so easily influenced as the more ignorant 
congregations in England. There is some- 
thing pathetic in his lamentations in his 
old age over what seemed to him the spirit- 
ual decline of his societies. As people 
grew well-to-do, they were less easily 
moved than when they first listened to him 
on the moors. After preaching to a certain 
congregation, he says : " Many of them were 
gay, genteel people. I was out of their 
depth. Oh, how hard it is to be shallow 
enough for a polite audience! " One feels 
a certain truth in this; for he appealed to 
the elemental forces, which lie deeper than 
anything which the polite audience had 
felt. Yet it reminds us of the naive con- 
fession of the Hebrew chronicler: "And 
the Lord was with Judah, and he drave out 
the inhabitants of the hill country; and he 
could not drive out the inhabitants of the 
valleys, because they had chariots of iron." 
The "gay, genteel people," shallow as 
may be their habitual thoughts, have souls 



Methodism 65 

also, as preachers like Savonarola have 
found; and men of intellectual strength and 
poise need the ministry of religion, also. 
If Wesley did not reach them, it is to be 
attributed, not to the depth of his religious 
experience, but to the narrowness of his 
religious philosophy. And so my praise of 
Methodism must have some serious abate- 
ments. Says Thomas Carlyle, "Is not se- 
rene or complete religion the highest aspect 
of human nature, as serene cant or complete 
no-religion is the lowest and the miser- 
ablest, between which two all manner of 
earnest Methodisms, introspections, agon- 
izing inquiries, never so morbid, play their 
respective parts, not without approbation ? " 

But, while we give approbation to actual 
Methodism, it is with something more than 
approbation, with hearty faith and rever- 
ence, that we speak of that ideal Methodism 
that it foreshadows. 

The new Methodism will cast aside what 
was morbid in its old inquiries and what 
was unreal in its experiences, but it will 
not give up its idea of religion as an expe- 
rience. It will cry aloud, "Ye must be 



66 "Members of One Body" 

born again, and again, and again! " It will 
still emphasize those great moments when 
the light flashes in through "the east win- 
dows of divine surprise." The experiences 
of religion will be repeated till they be- 
come as manifold as life itself. 

And the new Methodism will so interpret 
Wesley's doctrine of perfect sanctification 
that it will come to mean nothing less than 
the fulfilment of manhood. For Wesley's 
emphasis was right. Before his time re- 
ligious teachers had talked most about jus- 
tification, which was the removal of the 
penalties of sin. Wesley said that the main 
thing was the removal of the sin itself. 
The new Methodism will see that the per- 
fect life is not to be found through the 
magic of a single experience, but it will all 
the more fervently preach that the one ob- 
ject of all effort should be to obtain it. 
And it will find no more inspiring words to 
guide it than those of Wesley: "Finally, I 
preach that, being justified by faith, we 
taste of that heaven towards which we are 
going; and we tread down sin and fear, and 
sit in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." 



RATIONALISM 



IV. 
RATIONALISM 

THE types of Christianity which we have 
thus far considered have been mani- 
fested in certain historical organizations. 
But there are two principles which are 
found in all churches, rationalism and mys- 
ticism. 

By rationalism is here meant the princi- 
ple of common sense, or, if you will, the 
scientific method applied to religion. The 
rationalist does not recognize the authority 
of any book or church. He appeals to ob- 
servation and experiment. He pleads for 
perfect freedom of thought, and denies the 
sinfulness of doubt. 

To ask what rationalism, the trust in 
human understanding, the method of exper- 
iment and observation, has done for civil- 
ization, would be asking altogether too great 
a question to be answerd here. When Mr. 



70 "Members of One Body" 

Lecky sought to write the history of ration- 
alism in Europe, he found that in reality 
he was writing the history of modern civil- 
ization; for every step in the progress of 
civilization has been a step made possible 
by the method of science. One by one old 
superstitions have faded away in this grow- 
ing light. One by one the obstacles in the 
path of freedom have been brushed aside. 
To tell what rationalism has done for man 
would be to tell how the dark nightmare of 
persecution has passed away, how all the 
horrid dreams of witchcraft have ceased, 
and how out of the dark ages of mankind 
has come the new age in which we live. 
All free government is the result of the 
determination of men to use bravely those 
faculties with which they have been en- 
dowed, to follow absolutely the necessary 
laws of thought which they have discovered. 
And so the old ecclesiastical authority 
wanes, and the new authority of reason 
takes its place. But what has rationalism 
done for Christianity itself? Here we ask 
a question where there may be a difference 
in opinion. There are those who look 



Rationalism 7 1 

upon this growth of the reasoning power in 
religion as the death of Christianity, or, 
at least, the prophecy of its swift decay. 
Was not Christianity born in ignorance? 
Was it not cradled in miracle? Has not 
its whole course been through superstitions 
which have faded away in a larger light? 
And, when this power which has destroyed 
so much has done its perfect work, shall 
not Christianity itself become only a 
memory ? 

In order to answer the question what 
rationalism has done for Christianity, one 
must inquire further as to what this scien- 
tific method of which we speak is capable 
of doing, and what are its natural limita- 
tions. When any new power comes into 
play, it is apt to be looked upon with a 
superstitious fear and a superstitious hope. 
So it is with liberty, constitutional and re- 
ligious. So it is with this power which 
we call Science. We print it with capital 
letters, and then we bow down and worship 
it. And there are those who imagine that 
the time is coming when the old religions 
of the world will altogether cease; and I 



72 "Members of One Body" 

hear it sometimes said that, if we are but 
patient, we shall see the creation of a new 
religion, which will be the religion of 
science. 

It is imagined that all that men have 
experienced in the past may be looked upon 
as a delusion, and the historic growths 
of religion be brushed aside; and then that 
through an act of pure reasoning, through 
the exercise of scientific intelligence, we 
may make for ourselves a new religion, 
which shall be adequate to all our wants. 
There are some who look forward with great 
joy and hope to this new creation; and 
there are others, followers of the old gods, 
who look with terror upon the possibility. 
It seems to me that both the hope and the 
terror are alike unreasonable, almost ab- 
surd. Science never created anything, has 
no power to make anything. Nothing was 
ever created by reasoning about it or com- 
paring it with something else, or by classi- 
fying it; and science is but a method of 
classification, of comparison, of definition, 
and, in the very nature of the case, a thing 
must exist before it can be defined. What 



Rationalism 73 

would you think of one who should say: 
" Life thus far has been interesting enough, 
but not complete. It has existed in very 
poor forms, a struggling, weak thing, com- 
ing upward by slow degrees through the 
ages. By and by we shall be so advanced 
that all this will be done away; and biol- 
ogy will be so developed that we shall have 
a biological life which will be superior to 
anything we have seen before." You say 
at once that the biologist claims nothing of 
the sort. He simply sees life, tries to un- 
derstand it, tries to trace its origin, and, if 
possible, foretell its course. That is all. 
He accepts the fact that is offered to him, 
and so his science has its justification; but 
no biologist could ever invent life or 
create it. Long ago, when natural science, 
like everything else, was enveloped in su- 
perstition, a man would bring to his scien- 
tific friend, the alchemist, a bit of base 
metal, and would say "Here, good alche- 
mist, is this which I bring, and now I ask 
you to make me some gold." And the al- 
chemist, the superstitious man of science, 
would try to fulfil that impossible demand. 



74 "Members of One Body" 

Not so does the miner to-day come to the 
assayer. He brings his ore; and he says: 
"Here is the ore which I have found in the 
earth. Now I ask you to tell me how much 
gold is in it." And the assayer, having the 
fact presented to him, can give some esti- 
mate as to its value. Now, in just such a 
relation must religion stand to science. By 
no possible reasoning could any man invent 
it or create it. If there is such a thing as 
a science of religion, it presupposes the fact 
that religion, more or less perfect, already 
exists. That which is presented to the 
philosopher and the critic is a certain great 
fact of experience. 

It is a fact manifested in all human life, 
— manifested most of all, Jesus said, where 
it was most unconscious. The kingdom of 
heaven he found in the nature of a little 
child. And so he placed the little child in 
the midst of his disciples, and said: "This 
is what I mean to teach you. There is a 
secret hidden from the wise and the pru- 
dent, but revealed in that child's nature. 
Tell me what that child's nature means, 
what is implied in it, what may be de- 



Rationalism 75 

veloped from it, and then I will tell you 
what I mean by the kingdom of heaven." 
So in its very simplest forms religion 
presents itself to us as a fact to be rec- 
ognized and explained. It is a fact just 
as much as any fact of natural science,^ 
though infinitely more wonderful. It is a 
fact that men in the midst of the meanest 
surroundings and living the most imperfect 
lives have yet looked up toward the heavens, 
and wondered and worshipped. It is a fact 
which we find in the earliest words of our 
old Aryan languages. When two thoughts 
were brought together, — the thought of 
that which was nearest and of that which is 
vastest and most remote, — the primitive 
shepherds prayed to the Sky-father. They 
somehow felt that the universe was their 
Father's house. How did they come to 
have that feeling? How did they come to 
worship and to love, and at length bring 
their worship and their love together? 
How did the mystery of the world touch 
them with hope and faith? Our knowl- 
edge of the world, our actual science, may 
do much. It divides between the things 



y6 "Members of One Body " 

we know and the things we do not know 
beyond; but, when it has done that, it 
has not created religion or accounted for 
it. You tell me that we do not know so 
much of that unseen world as our fathers 
have dreamed of. Very well; but that is 
not the question of religion. The question 
is this : How comes it that before the un- 
known men have stood and do stand to-day 
in a religious attitude, — that is, in an 
attitude of hope and of reverence and in- 
stinctive trust? You tell me that you will 
wait till religion shall be placed, as we say, 
upon a scientific basis, before you will be- 
lieve in religion, when the very fact is that 
that which challenges our science is just 
this: that men have been so constituted as 
to worship the invisible, and believe that 
the things they do not see are even greater 
than the things they know. What would 
you say of one who, in the beginning of a 
battle, should say: "I will not enter into 
this fight until you place my courage upon 
a scientific basis. I will act the coward 
until you prove to me that the victory 
is mine, and that I will come out un- 



Rationalism J J 

scathed from the conflict?" Ah! you know 
that courage is something more than that, 
and something diviner. Courage means 
that the man takes his chances, that he 
gives himself to some high quest, that, 
without waiting for an answer, he chal- 
lenges the unknown, and goes to battle with 
joy. That is the very essence of courage, 
that it outruns the sober understanding; and 
that is the meaning of love. And that is 
the meaning of hope, as Paul said, — "Hope 
that is seen is not hope." Hope that can be 
scientifically verified is not that thing 
which elevates the man above the beast. 
It is that diviner power so full of signifi- 
cance that no philosophy has ever fathomed 
its meaning. Hope, love, trust, courage, 
all that is divinest in the human soul, — 
these are the facts to which we refer. 
These are facts which have appeared among 
men before they began to reason about life 
or about thought or about conscience. 
These form part of that kingdom of heaven 
which is in the heart of every child. 

When one comes to think of religion as 
being something which we find most divine 



78 "Members of One Body" 

in human life, and the existence of which 
is verified by universal experience, we 
neither look for a new religion to be cre- 
ated by some scientific process or to be 
destroyed by it. We do look for the grow- 
ing knowledge of man to more and more 
separate that which is eternal and valuable, 
that which is intrinsically religious, from 
that which is untrue. We look to science 
to do here what it does everywhere, — not to 
create, but to define and to classify the facts 
which already exist. Now, I think we are 
prepared somewhat to answer the question 
as to what rationalism, the free use of our 
reasoning faculties, has done and is doing 
for Christianity. 

Rationalism has helped Christianity by 
purifying it, by taking away those things 
which do not and never have in reality be- 
longed to it, thus rendering it possible to 
believe in it and to see what it really is. 
And rationalism has clone more than that. 
It has invested Christianity with a dignity 
and a meaning which it never had before. 
Have you ever noticed that the least inter- 
esting lives of any great religious teachers 



Rationalism 79 

or saints have been those which have been 
written by their intimate followers, their 
uncritical disciples? I remember the de- 
light with which I first read Mrs. Oli- 
phant's "Life of Saint Francis." It was 
written from a Protestant standpoint, and 
yet brought a living picture of that beauti- 
ful childlike spirit of the old time. It 
kindled in my mind a desire to know more 
about the saint, and I borrowed from a 
Catholic friend one of the standard Catholic 
lives, and I tried to read; but, alas! my 
saint was not there, or shall I say he was 
there, but cruelly concealed from me? In- 
stead of that simple, beautiful life, I read 
of all sorts of vulgar miracles and prodigies 
attributed to him; and that which made me 
love him most, that was the thing which his 
disciple least saw. Is not that true in 
regard to all religious history? Is not that 
true in regard to the history of Jesus of 
Nazareth himself? Even when we go to 
those earliest Gospels, we find something 
like that. We doubt whether those who 
wrote those Gospels dwelt most with loving 
emphasis on the story of the Master with 



80 "Members of One Body " 

the little children in his arms, or whether 
it might not have seemed still more divine 
to them that this man was wonderful enough 
to blast the fig-tree by a mere word or to 
send the devils into the herd of swine. 
We have to use our critical faculties at 
every stage of the history before it yields 
its spiritual meaning and beauty. When 
Sir Edwin Arnold gave us "The Light of 
Asia," we felt as if we would all like to be 
Buddhists. This religion of India is so 
beautiful, so tender, when we are allowed 
to see its heart. But we are likely to be 
disappointed when we go to the Buddhist 
interpreters, for the pure light is hidden 
under trivial commentaries. And, when 
the poet turned from "The Light of Asia" 
to "The Light of the World," did we not 
feel that he helped us to understand Chris- 
tianity, — that that life of the Master in 
Galilee was more beautiful than we had 
thought, when we saw it through our theo- 
logical preconceptions? And then you ask, 
Why more beautiful? Not because he had 
added something, but because he had simply 
brushed away all those horrid thoughts of 



Rationalism 8 1 

an angry God and the bloody atonement, 
and introduced once more the Jesus of the 
Beatitudes. That is the method not sim- 
ply of poetry, but of rationalism. For 
rationalism is the assertion of the right to 
choose among the things handed down to 
us those which commend themselves to our 
understanding. 

There is no way in which religion more 
surely loses its ground than in the mistaken 
attempt to shut out this rationalistic and 
critical spirit from the teaching of religion. 
Just after the Reformation the Jesuits 
gained control of the education of the youth 
in France. "Let us have the children and 
youth," they said, "and we do not care 
what becomes of the men." The result of 
their method has been that the average 
Frenchman at some time or other has come 
under the influence of a narrow type of 
Christianity; and then, as he becomes a 
man, he grows beyond all that, and looks 
upon it with the most supreme contempt. 
Protestants are often doing the same thing 
here in America. The careful religious 
parent would have his son receive a liberal 



82 "Members of One Body" 

education, but he would have him learn 
nothing that shall in the least way enlarge 
or alter his religious faith. And so he 
founds his denominational college, where 
there shall be liberal education on every 
possible subject but religion. The result 
you see in the wide-spread contempt of those 
who graduate from institutions where this 
policy prevails for all that belongs to re- 
ligion. It is inevitable from the nature 
of the mind. Here is the boy taught in 
the home and in the Sunday-school that 
religion, by which is meant his form of 
religion, is the greatest thing in the world, 
and because of that he worships. We 
cannot worship anything but the greatest. 
It is the heart's homage to the highest, the 
broadest, and the truest. And then he goes 
to school and to college, and he learns 
many things. This world, which he has 
been taught to despise, is much more won- 
derful than he had imagined, so full of in- 
terest, so rich in meaning. And in this 
wonderful world everything is related to 
every other thing, for there are great laws 
running through all. He comes to feel the 



Rationalism 83 

interest which every developed mind has in 
every fact which is related to the life of the 
universe. The veriest bit of stone has its 
history. T]ie blade of grass tells its story 
of the past, and gives its prophecy of the 
future. All of these things belong to one 
great order, — the great order of the uni- 
verse. He comes to have little interest in 
any unrelated fact, — any fact that does not 
tell of some law behind it. And he finds 
no fact which has n?t such relations, except 
the fact of his religion. This seems to 
stand absolutely alone. It is no longer the 
greatest thing in the world to him, when 
he has learned of the wonders of natural 
law, the miracles of which he is told do not 
seem so incredible as ^trivial. All secular 
history is a mighty unfolding. It strikes 
awe into his soul. But the history of re- 
ligion, as he has been taught it, seems alto- 
gether finite, beginning a certain number 
of many centuries ago, 1 — not like life it- 
self, going clear back to the beginning and 
involved in the necessity of things, nor like 
physical power, inevitable and eternal. No 
correlation of forces here, no comparison 



84 "Members of One Body" 

with kindred forms, but something stern 
and fixed and limited. He is told that re- 
ligion consists in believing certain things 
which are said to have happened, but for 
which there is little proof. Its apostolic 
succession is limited to some 7 ittle line in 
history, and is not a great stream flowing 
from everlasting to everlasting. All is 
so small and so inadequate. And, being 
trained thus, he simply becomes indifferent 
to religious thought. I^e does not take it 
seriously any longer. 

To such a mind rationalism brings salva- 
tion. Rationalism teaches that religion is 
not an isolated fact, not a fact of one nation 
or of one simple stream of history, not some- 
thing that is accidental or artificial, but is 
just as inevitable a|3 life. Indeed, it is 
life, the life of the soul. It teaches that 
this religion that he has learned at his 
mother's knee was simply one ray from the 
central sun, one th'yob of the pulse of the 
world, one little g^mpse of that which is 
absolute and eternal. Always men have 
been religious, always something within the 
heart has been striving for better things; 



Rationalism 85 

and the best religion is akin to the worst 
religion, as the highest life is akin to the 
lowest. The Christ himself but interprets 
the heart of humanity, if he is the desire of 
all nations. And rationalism not only 
teaches this, but teaches that that which 
most repelled him did not belong to the 
essence of religion, but was the obstacle 
which it must overcome as it grows toward 
perfection. And so many a thing which 
once seemed sacred to him he casts aside, 
because the truth of things has grown more 
sacred and more divine to him. 

The very beauty and the sanctity of re- 
ligion make it necessary for us always to 
allow free play to that criticism which 
alone keeps it pure. In one of his noblest 
sonnets Shakspere tells us that it is the 
most beautiful soul which needs to be most 
watchful of itself, lest things foul and false 
take shelter there. 

" Oh, what a mansion have these vices got 
Which for their habitation chose out thee, 

Where beautie's veil doth cover every blot 
And all things turn to fair that eyes can see ! 

Take heed, dear heart, of this large privilege." 



86 "Members of One Body " 

So must we say to those Christian 
churches whose history has been so glori- 
ous, and which have been the custodians of 
such rare grace. Because the beauty of 
holiness has in such large measure been 
there, we cannot bear to think that they 
should afford refuge for a lie. "Take heed, 
dear heart, of this large privilege." 

The final effect of rationalism upon re- 
ligion must be to make it more truly spirit- 
ual. And how is that? you say. Do we 
not talk of "cold rationalism"? I believe 
it makes religion more spiritual simply for 
this reason: that it demonstrates to us that 
nothing but the spiritual element can abide. 
Nothing but this will stand the test of the 
severest examination. Paul writes of these 
beautiful fruits of the spirit; and then he 
says, "Against these there is no law." No 
law of Moses of old, — that was his thought, 
— no law of nature, no law of the mind, 
can make these less or different from what 
they are. 

Rationalism, the religion of the under- 
standing, is the John the Baptist preparing 
the way for the religion of the free spirit. 



Rationalism 87 

Its baptism is that of the clear water, wash- 
ing away old errors. But it prophesies the 
new baptism of the Holy Ghost and of fire. 
Jesus brings together two ideas, which 
must be united before religion can gain 
complete power, when he says that men 
shall worship in spirit and in truth. When 
we bring severest truth to our worship, it 
becomes most spiritual. All else shall 
fade, but here is something that abides. 
The only faith that can stand the test of 
reason is a faith that "works by love and 
purifies the heart." 



MYSTICISM 



V. 

MYSTICISM 

IT is somewhat unfortunate that some of 
the best words, which ought to have the 
widest significance, are narrowed, accident- 
ally, in their application. Such is the 
case with the word which I would choose, 
had it not otherwise been used, — the word 
"Spiritualist." In its large meaning, a 
Spiritualist is a man who believes in the 
things of the spirit, walks according to the 
spirit, the man who feels the divineness of 
his own soul, and that it is in touch with 
the infinite soul of the universe. This 
good word has been adopted by those who 
believe in certain forms of intercourse be- 
tween embodied and disembodied spirits. 
The word " spiritist " would be the more 
proper one for this type of thought, leaving 
the other for the larger meaning. We 
have, however, one word which has been 



92 "Members of One Body" 

actually used to describe this kind of 
thought and feeling, — the word "mystic." 
The mystic is one who appeals not pri- 
marily as the source of his religion to a book 
or a church, nor, as does the pure rational- 
ist, to certain arguments and logical proc- , 
esses, but who makes the direct appeal to 
his own heart. He believes that there is a 
revelation from the Infinite, — a revelation 
vouchsafed to every soul in the degree of 
its purity. And so he listens to hear the 
voice of the eternal spirit speaking to him. 
He believes that the great God who made 
the heavens and the earth dwells within 
himself, and that, when all is silent, when 
self is forgotten, and all the passions that 
disturb the mind are stilled, he becomes 
conscious of the divine presence. There is 
a light, he says, which lighteth every man 
that cometh into the world. Most of us do 
not see that light, still less do walk in it. 
We love the garish day, and we forget this 
holy light that might evermore be leading 
us on. And the height of wisdom, this 
man says, is not to accumulate vast stores 
of knowledge, nor to be able to trace from 






Mysticism 93 

their beginnings all the great laws and 
forces of the external universe; but it is 
the very simplest thing in the world. It is 
simply the opening of our own eyes. He 
also says the outward signs of deity are 
not the strongest. There are intimations 
which come to every one of us when we are 
at our highest, which come without the 
aid of priest or church or ritual, and 
make us sure that the power from whence 
we came is divine, is righteousness, is 
love. Men who have thought thus have not 
been confined to any one nation or time. 
All religions have had them. All relig- 
ions, we may say, began in just this kind 
of thought, in the minds of men who be- 
lieved first of all in the intuitions of their 
own souls. But all religions have tended 
to forget their origin, to make of this per- 
sonal touch with the divine and sense of 
the eternal, a miracle confined to one man, 
a favorite of Deity, and afterwards to be 
received on faith. Read the history of 
Christianity as you find it in its begin- 
ning, in the story of Jesus, and you find in 
this man a pure mystic, a pure Spiritualist, 



94 "Members of One Body" 

to whom these finer forces were all. Jesus 
cared little for the tradition of the religion 
of his own land. He was bold to say, 
"Thus said Moses, but / say unto you 
something far different." He cared little 
for the outward forms of worship as they 
were held in his day, and told those who 
came to him that they need not have long 
prayers, for God did not care for their much 
speaking. The pure in heart saw God. 
The little children, in their simplicity, 
were the wise. As you follow his teach- 
ings, you find that they appeal thus directly 
to the inner light. If that light which is 
within be darkness, Jesus had nothing more 
to say. "He that hath ears to hear," he 
said, "let him hear." "My sheep hear my 
voice." He had no other proof, no 
stronger miracle, than the response of heart 
to heart. By and by Christianity became 
something different from that pure spiritual 
influence. The thought of a great church, 
an external power, what Jesus called the 
kingdom of this world, dawned upon the 
minds' of his followers. And how could 
that be supported? How should men be- 



Mysticism 95 

lieve when the teachers of Christianity 
went about teaching doctrines that did not, 
perhaps, awaken response in the soul? 
Something external must take the place of 
this pure spiritual light. And so came 
systems of theology and of priestcraft, great 
churches founded not at all upon the appeal 
to the individual soul, but upon the appeal 
to outward evidence, and at last to some 
special miracle. That has been the general 
history of Christianity, — the making exter- 
nal that which was at the beginning internal 
and spiritual, the substitution of argument 
for intuition, and at last the appeal to 
mere custom and tradition in defence of 
doctrines which both the heart and the 
logical faculty reject. And yet, when 
we thus read the history of Christianity, 
we are seeing only upon one side. All 
through these same ages another kind of 
thought and of feeling has existed. There 
have been men who have drawn aside from 
the churches and from the schools, and 
sought, as the very heart of all religion, the 
answer to the question, How do I stand in 
my relation to that great Power from 



g6 "Members of One Body" 

whence I came? And, then, How do I 
stand in relation to these my fellow-men 
about me? What duties do I owe to them? 
And, then, What light may I see when all 
about me grows dark? What may I hear 
when all my friends stand aside and I face 
the silence of eternity? Many of these 
men have been looked upon with contempt 
by the churchmen of their day. But, on 
the other hand, some of them have been 
recognized as the spiritual successors of 
Jesus. They have been called saints, and 
almost worshipped, — these men who stood 
alone, thinking their own thoughts. Men 
have worshipped them, built new churches 
to their memory, .done everything but 
understand them. These were the mystics, 
the men of the spirit. All through the 
dark ages these men abounded, sometimes 
within the churches, sometimes without 
them. They did not reject formally the 
elaborate doctrines of the Catholic Church, 
but simply ignored them. Seeing some- 
thing far better, they had little use for the 
subtleties of the Schoolmen and for the 
ambitious schemes of ecclesiastics. Mysti- 



Mystwism 97 

cal sects were formed whose very names 
were significant. "The brethren of the 
free spirit," some of them called them- 
selves, "the brethren of the common life," 
others, bringing the idea of something far 
different from that which the Church of 
their day was striving to effect. So the 
mystics, Eckhart and Tauler, arose in Ger- 
many; and out of that line of silent 
thinkers and pure worshippers came at 
length that great book of religion, The 
"Imitation of Christ," — a marvellous book, 
when we think whence it came and when, a 
book of religion written in the very midst 
of those ages of scholastic subtlety, and yet 
not a word of any of the doctrines which 
the Church of that time esteemed most es- 
sential. It may be read to-day by men of 
every faith, and has been the constant com- 
panion of many who have cast aside tradi- 
tional Christianity. It breathes nothing 
but the purest, tenderest sympathy for all, 
and the finest hope for humanity. It 
teaches a religion which *eems fitted to be 
universal. It is strange how many of 
the doctrines which entangled the reason 



98 "Members of One Body" 

of men were broken through so easily by 
those men who lived in the spirit. That 
great doctrine which has cast such darkness 
over the universe, eternal punishment, 
faded away before the clear vision of most 
of the old mystics. It was something with 
which they had nothing to do any longer, 
now that they had learned that God is love. 
In an age when the walls of churches 
were covered with pictures showing the tor- 
ments of the lost, we read of Heinrich 
Suso, whom the people called "the minne- 
singer of the love of God." When Master 
Eckhart spoke of an endless hell, he said, 
"It is the Nothingness that burns eter- 
nally." To the scholastic teachers relig- 
ion was a prim garden, well walled about; 
but the mystics loved to picture it as a 
sweet wilderness. "The spiritual life," 
writes one of them, "may fitly be called a 
wilderness by reason of the many sweet 
flowers which spring up and flourish, when 
they are not trodden under foot of men. In 
this wilderness are the lilies of chastity and 
the white roses of innocence, and there are 
the red roses of sacrifice. In this wilder- 



Mysticism 99 

ness, too, may we find the violets of 
meekness, and many other fair flowers and 
wholesome roots. In this wilderness shalt 
thou choose thyself a pleasant spot wherein 
to dwell." 

The Reformation divided Christendom 
along intellectual lines, but the spiritual 
succession remained unbroken. In the 
Catholic Church Molinos and Fenelon and 
Madame Guyon added new chapters to the 
"Imitation of Christ." On the other hand, 
Luther was powerfully influenced by the 
German mystics, as Wesley was afterwards. 
A number of Protestant sects were formed 
according to the mystical ideal of piety. 
The Moravians sought to re-establish primi- 
tive Christianity, with its quiet walk with 
God and its blessing upon the peace- 
makers, the sons of God. So the society of 
Friends, casting aside all mere ecclesiasti- 
cism, found a deep source of consolation 
and strength in a life of simplicity and un- 
selfishness. They sought to keep the soul 
open to intimations from above; and, when 
no words came, they learned to worship in 
reverent silence. Another development of 



ioo "Members of One Body" 

mystical Christianity is seen in the Church 
of the New Jerusalem. Immanuel Sweden- 
borg did not always distinguish between 
the pure intuitions of humanity and the 
pictures of his own imagination, yet he has 
much for all those who would walk in the 
spirit. 

And modern liberalism, in the midst of 
all its new doubts, has been saved from arid 
denials by the infusion of the mystical ele- 
ment. When old ideas of revelation have 
failed, men have listened to the fresh reve- 
lation in their own souls. In America the 
spiritual possibilities of free thought were 
illustrated in the Transcendental movement. 
Though it was associated with a phase of 
philosophy which was transitory, the deeper 
influences of Transcendentalism remain as 
permanent forces in our life. 

In Emerson we find the mystical and ra- 
tionalistic elements united. He was at 
once a seer and a critic. In this perfect 
union of the intuitive and logical faculties 
lies the possibility of a free religion. He 
himself says, "What one man is said to 
learn by experience, a man of extraordinary 



Mysticism I o I 

sagacity is said without experience to di- 
vine.. The Arabians say that Abul Khain, 
the mystic, and Abu Ali Seena, the philos- 
opher, conferred together; and, on parting, 
the philosopher said, 'All that he sees I 
know,' and the mystic said, 'All that he 
knows I see.' ' When we ask what mysti- 
cism has done for religion, we must answer 
that it has given rise to all religions. The 
fountain-head is always found in some pure 
heart. The intuition comes before the 
argument. Jesus interprets the silence of 
eternity by his own love before Paul de- 
velops his system of theology. Men are 
born into the spiritual life before they 
begin to discuss the theory of regener- 
ation. It is not true, as Robert Burns 
wrote, that "churches are built to please 
the priests." Churches and priesthoods 
come into existence to preserve the vision 
which some saintly soul has seen. They 
serve as a copy and shadow of the heav- 
enly things, even as Moses is warned of 
God, when he is about to make the taber- 
nacle, " See that thou make it according to 
the pattern shewed thee on the mount." 



102 "Members of One Body " 

The temple and cathedral are meaning- 
less piles of stone when the spirit that built 
them has fled. 

u It is not the wall of stone without 

That makes the building small or great, 
But the soul's light shining round about 
And the faith that overcometh doubt 
And the love that is stronger than hate." 

And, as the purely spiritual element is 
that which creates a religon, it is also that 
which reforms it. The inner light flashes 
upon the outward abuses, and shows their 
real hideousness. As we read the journal 
of that plain Quaker, John Woolman, we 
are surprised to find how much he saw that 
was hidden from the statesmen and divines 
of his day. He had but one standard by 
which to judge, that of universal righteous- 
ness. The slaveholders quoted their texts, 
and brought forward their special pleas. 
But, before he would discuss the justice of 
their cause, he must ask a more searching 
question, "Do you desire nothing but jus- 
tice? " And, when all motives of self-in- 
terest were eliminated, it was seen that the 
question was too plain for argument. 



Mysticism 103 

This is the secret which the pure in 
heart have learned: that the problems of 
life may be easily solved if we are only 
willing first to reduce them to their sim- 
plest terms. Our practical mistakes come 
largely from our own selfishness and love of 
ease and lack of sympathy. Purified from 
these, the mind becomes a mirror reflecting 
back the truth of things. "He that is spir- 
itual judgeth all things." There are voices 
which speak out of the silence, and which 
are not to be gainsaid. 

"They send me challenges to right, 

And loud rebuke my ill ; 
They ring my bells of victory, 

They breathe my ' Peace, be still ! ' 
They ever seem to say : My child, 

Why seek me so all day? 
Now journey inward to thyself 

And listen by the way." 

It is a superficial view which sees in the 
search for inner purity and peace only a self- 
ish retreat from the hard conflict of life. 
It is rather the way to gain strength for 
that conflict. "For their sakes," said 
Jesus, "I sanctify myself." When a great 



104 "Members of One Body" 

wrong is to be righted, there is need for 
that high courage which is born of spiritual 
insight. In the battle there must be 
some Sir Galahad who can say, — 

" My strength is as the strength of ten, 
Because my heart is pure." 

In our busy, self-confident age, when 
there is a tendency to believe only in what 
is external, we sadly need a revival of the 
old pieties. We cannot get along without 
those fruits of the spirit which grow in the 
sheltered gardens of the interior life. To 
be alert, eager, curious, this, we say, is 
to be alive. Yet it is only part of life. 
And many a man who prides himself on his 
knowledge of the world is a stranger to 
himself. He fears no foe but solitude. 
With feverish haste, he undertakes new 
works, reads, perhaps, many books, so that 
he may not have time to think. Never in 
all his life has he turned aside to learn 
what the silence may have to teach him. 
To such a man "knowledge comes, but wis- 
dom lingers." 

To most of us there comes a time as to 



Mysticism 105 

George Eliot's Maggie Tulliver, when she 
took up the book of Thomas a Kempis with 
"a wide, hopeless yearning for something, 
whatever it is, that is the greatest and best 
thing in the world." 

Let us give thanks for the lesson which 
all the men of the spirit teach us : that 
the greatest and best is also the near- 
est, and that the way to find it is by the 
path of simplicity. Simplicity of purpose 
leads one to work with God for things that 
are eternal. Simplicity of thought leads 
one to seize directly the truths that are 
most important. Simplicity of feeling 
leaves no room for distracting jealousy or 
envy. "Blessed are the simple-hearted," 
says the old saint in his cloister; "for they 
shall enjoy great peace." 

And not in the cloister only, but by mul- 
titudes amid the stress and strain of life, 
has this beatitude been verified. Every- 
where love finds love, and simple trust 
lays hold on eternal truth. For indeed 
"there is something in the soul above the 
soul, divine, simple, not to be named." 



THE 
UNITY OF CHRISTENDOM 



VI. 
THE UNITY OF CHRISTENDOM 

WE have considered some of the differ- 
ent types of Christianity. The 
time has now come for us to take our bear- 
ings, and see to what point we have been 
irresistibly led. One conclusion seems to 
be forced upon us, and that is that the word 
"Christian" has a larger significance than 
most Christian people are willing to allow. 
It has been the custom for each sect to 
make its own definition, large enough to 
include only itself, and to trace out the 
channel along which the great stream of 
Christian life and thought must of necessity 
flow. These definitions have been very 
much like the levees which they throw up 
along the banks of the lower Mississippi : 
they serve excellently well in low water, 
but in the first freshet the great river 
washes them away, and finds new channels 



no "Members of One Body" 

for itself. And so it has been with every 
great revival of Christianity. It has sur- 
prised those who have made the definitions 
of Christianity. The definitions of the 
Schoolmen were well received in the 
Middle Ages, and seemed to be final; but 
they were futile obstacles to the rising tide 
of the Reformation. All the properties of 
the Church of England could not prevent 
the revival under Wesley. Christianity 
has often been defined as a system of eccle- 
siasticism; but that has never prevented 
fervent mystics from being born who have 
seen in Christianity a direct access to God 
without need of church or priest. Chris- 
tianity meant a theory of atonement and of 
trinity, — but not to Channing. Chris- 
tianity meant the belief in miracles and in 
an infallible Bible, — but not to Theodore 
Parker. The Westminster Assembly of 
divines declared gravely that the revelation 
of God had ceased when the canon of Script- 
ure was completed, and that henceforth 
"nothing was to be added by any new reve- 
lation of the spirit." But, when a man 
feels in his own heart that a new revelation 



The Unity of Christendom in 

of the spirit has indeed come to him, what 
can any assembly of divines do? The 
strong man keepeth his house, but only 
until the stronger than he has come. 

In religion, as in love, "nice customs 
curt'sy to great kings." When the king 
has come to his own again, all the acts of 
exclusion which were passed during the in- 
terregnum are null and void. Said Jesus, 
"The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, 
and the violent take it by force." The 
temple stands unchanged for generations 
till one comes so full of the spirit of wor- 
ship that he is able to destroy the temple 
and forthwith build it again. And the 
old creeds, which have stood unchanged 
through ages of chilling doubt, fall away 
before the coming of a new age of faith, as 
the leaves which cling all winter to the 
oaks fall off at the fresh budding of the 
spring. Traditional religion is always at 
the mercy of personal religion. It holds 
its own only by sufferance, and the memory 
of what the spirit said in the past fades 
away when once more the spirit speaks to 
men in the present. 



112 "Members of One Body" 

What does this all mean? It means 
simply this: that religion is not a form, 
but a life, and life is the one thing which 
it is impossible for us to define; it is that 
which mocks at all the forms it uses. Life 
is the most persistent thing we know, and 
yet the most susceptible to change. It 
is the artist which is continually mould- 
ing the world to its desire; and yet it is of 
all things most plastic, and is influenced by 
every touch. Could we have seen the first 
germ of life that appeared upon our planet, 
by what possibility could we have defined 
it? What prophet could have foretold what 
forms it must take? And yet, if our wise 
men speak truly, in that simple germ there 
was the promise and the potency of all the 
forms of vital existence. Could we have 
stood and watched it with the eye of wis- 
dom, what could we have said but this? 
A new force has come into play, and hence- 
forth this planet is to be the battle-field on 
which is to be fought out its mighty 
struggle for existence. At the beginning 
it seems to be the weakest and the most 
helpless of all things: it seems that all the 






The Unity of Christendom 113 

odds are against the persistence of the vital 
force. All the forces of nature seem hos- 
tile, and are combining to destroy it; and 
only after long ages have passed will these 
forces become its servants. In the mean 
time, how is life to escape its enemies? 
There is only one way by which it can do 
it, and that is by continually yielding to 
them, by changing its forms as new dangers 
approach. 

Only through its myriad disguises has 
life been able to survive. The old myths 
are full of stories of metamorphosis, but 
none so strange as that which sober science 
tells. From form to form it maketh haste, 
ever clothing itself in new colors and elud- 
ing its old enemies. Each new circum- 
stance which makes life seemingly impos- 
sible, while it destroys the old form under 
which it existed, is but the mould in which 
some new type of life is cast. 

What is true of life in general is true of 
every form of 'life. It is true of religion: 
it is true of that particular form of religion^ 
which we call Christianity. Christianity 
has existed through eighteen centuries be- 



"Members of One Body" 



cause it has taken in turn the impress of 
each century that has passed. When we go 
back to the beginning, and ask ourselves 
concerning primitive Christianity, we are 
apt to be sadly disappointed ; and the more 
critical our study of its original documents, 
the more meagre seem to be the results. 
Each sect of Christendom claims to be the 
direct descendant of this primitive form of 
Christianity. These claims can neither be 
proven nor disproven. What did Jesus 
teach in regard to the Church, its min- 
isters, its doctrines, and its ordinances? 
What did he teach in regard to predesti- 
nation, in regard to the trinity, in regard 
to atonement, the apostolic succession, or 
the second probation? What was the prac- 
tice of the early Church and its theory in 
regard to social questions? Was that com- 
munity of goods of which we read only 
something accidental, or were these early 
Christians seeking to inaugurate a social- 
istic commonwealth? He who wishes to 
dogmatize on these subjects may do so with 
impunity, but he who wishes to find the 
ultimate facts must confess that the sources 



The Unity of Christendom 1 1 5 

of information we have are not sufficient. 
One thing we are safe in saying: that not 
one of the existing sects of Christendom 
is an exact reproduction of the earliest 
type. 

The origin of Christianity, like the 
origin of most great historic movements, is 
shrouded in obscurity. Even Paul did not 
enter into the thought of the first circle of 
the Galilean disciples. He boasts that he 
received his gospel, not through them, but 
by direct inspiration of his own ; and, when 
it pleased God to reveal his Son in him, he 
went not up to Jerusalem to the other dis- 
ciples, but he went into Arabia, and there 
in solitude wrought out his thought. 

The claim that some one type of Chris- 
tianity represents exactly the first, and has 
been miraculously preserved, so that it only 
is to-day entitled to receive the name 
"Christianity," is baseless. It is most 
easily disproved when made by great his- 
toric churches like the Catholic and the 
Anglican, whose development and changes 
have been wrought in the full light of 
history. We know how much older some 



n6 "Members of One Body" 

of their rites and doctrines are than the early 
Christianity, and how much newer are others. 
To say that they are Christian no more 
means that all of their characteristics can 
be traced to a single source in the Gospels 
than to say that the Mississippi River rises 
in Lake Itasca means that every drop of 
water which flows through the great river 
into the gulf had its origin in Minnesota. 
So Christianity to-day is a great historic 
stream. We trace its course to the Gali- 
lean hills, but it has had great tributaries 
flowing into it. Roman, Grecian, Egyp- 
tian, Persian, and Gothic streams have 
joined it; and the waters have been long 
intermingled. 

What, then, was primitive Christianity, 
or, rather, what shall we say Christianity 
is in its essence? It is just what Jesus 
said it was, — a germ of spiritual life, 
itself the result of countless causes in 
the past and to be the cause of countless 
effects in the future. "The kingdom of 
heaven is like a grain of mustard-seed, 
which, when it is sown upon the earth, is 
less than all the seeds that are upon the 



The Unity of Christendom 117 

earth, yet, when it is sown, groweth up and 
becometh greater than all herbs, and putteth 
out great branches." Christianity has put 
forth many great branches in the past, and 
is destined to put forth more in the future. 
We cannot define it until it is finished, and 
no religion is finished until it is dead. 
Because we believe in the vitality of Chris- 
tianity, we cannot limit it to this or that 
form. 

And so the sympathetic student of Chris- 
tianity comes to different forms in which it 
is manifested. He sees that one is better 
than another, finer in its significance, and 
stronger in its fibre; and yet he denies 
to none of them the great Christian name. 
He sees in all of them the historic develop- 
ments of a single spiritual life. When 
thus we come to look upon different forms 
of Christianity, we may criticise all, but 
we will despise none. The ignorant Catho- 
lic looks upon Luther as the arch-enemy, 
and sees in the Reformation of the sixteenth 
century only a great outburst of hate against 
the holy Mother Church. The enlightened 
Catholic, though he may still regret the 



Ii8 "Members of One Body" 

schism, sees that it was inevitable. And 
so the ignorant Protestant looks upon the 
Church of Rome as "the scarlet woman," 
and he imagines that all the claims of papal 
supremacy arose from the evil machinations 
and impostures of priests. But go back 
with me to the time when this supremacy of 
Rome began. Ask what was the reason 
that all Christendom looked there for help 
and bowed down to this great power. As 
we study the origin of it, we see the reason 
of it. It was a time when the old Roman 
Empire was tottering to its fall, and civil- 
ization with it. Men, affrighted, were 
looking toward Rome again for that power 
which should save them from the impending 
ruin. Who is there to give help ? The 
emperors? A degenerate race, no longer 
living in the cities of the Caesars, but 
hiding in the marshes of Ravenna. The 
senators? There was a time when their 
very presence awed the barbarous Gauls, but 
now they are mere sycophants, worthy only 
of the scorn that is heaped upon them. 
The people of Rome? Once the ambassa- 
dors of Pyrrhus said that every one of them 



The Unity of Christendom 119 

was a king, and now they are but slaves 
rejoicing in their fetters. The Roman 
legions ? Once they were the terror of the 
world: now they are the mercenaries sell- 
ing their swords to the highest bidder. 
Who, then, shall save in this hour of bitter 
need? There is but one man able to do 
the deed, but one high office which has not 
been bereft of majesty. Attila and his Huns 
are at the gate of Italy. Who is it that goes 
forth to meet them? It is Leo, the bishop, 
who goes unarmed into their camp; and, 
when he returns, Rome for the time is 
saved. A spiritual might was his which 
awed the barbarians. In all those panic- 
stricken ages but one institution remained 
strong, and that was the Church. In time 
of need, it armed itself with new weapons 
against the barbarians. With consummate 
strategy it outflanked the enemy at every 
point. Before the barbarians could reach 
Italy missionaries of the cross, who were 
the soldiers of civilization as well, had met 
them, and conquered them in their own 
dark forests. The Vikings sailed away on 
their voyages to the south, and Christen- 



120 li Members of One Body" 

dom trembled; but, when they returned, it 
was to find the cross planted at the head of 
the fiord, and to hear tales how the White 
Christ had come and conquered Odin in his 
immemorial fastnesses. Do you wonder 
that men who saw these things wondered 
and worshipped? Do you wonder that 
the men who did these things were re- 
ceived with boundless adoration and con- 
fidence by those whom they saved? Al- 
ways it is the law of life that he that 
overcometh shall have power over the na- 
tions. The power of the Church of Rome 
was nobly won. Alas that it has not al- 
ways been so nobly used! And if, in that 
great struggle with barbarism, the Church 
itself suffered; if, in going down in that 
hand-to-hand conflict with Paganism, it be- 
came itself half paganized; if a thousand 
dark superstitions clung to it, and if its 
voice lost something of its old purity, — let 
us be sorrowful, but never scornful. Every 
battle of the warrior is with confused noise 
and with garments rolled in blood; yet the 
warrior is not less worthy of our plaudits 
because of the stains and the scars of the 
battle. 



The Unity of Christendom 1 21 

When Dante had won his way through 
the darkness of hell, and at last in the 
light of day began his ascent of the moun- 
tain, his guide wet his hands with dew 
and gently washed from his face the smoke 
which had gathered on it. And so must 
every true reformer feel toward the great 
Church to which we owe so much. When 
we see it emerging all darkened, but tri- 
umphant, from the inferno of barbarism, 
we should look upon it not with contempt, 
but with love. The new day has dawned ; 
and, now that it stands in the morning 
light, let it cleanse itself from the old 
stains with the morning dew. 

And so it is with the controversies be- 
tween rationalist and traditionalist, radi- 
cal and conservative, orthodox and liber- 
alise These controversies, of themselves, 
do little; for the aim of the controversial- 
ist is to find out the weak point of his 
antagonist. But what profits this? Sup- 
pose I can prove that, in regard to certain 
things, my neighbor is only a fool, am 
I wiser for my discovery? It is not his 
weak point, but it is his strong point 



122 "Members of One Body" 

which may help me. Suppose he is 
frightened at a shadow, I want to know the 
shadow of what. Suppose this doctrine of 
his is only a fiction, still the important 
question remains, On what fact is that fic- 
tion founded, and how was it suggested? 
Says Dr. Martineau, "Every fiction that has 
ever laid strong hold of human belief is the 
mistaken image of some great truth to 
which reason will direct its search; while 
half-reason is content with laughing at the 
superstition, and unreason with believing 
it." When we assume this attitude, we 
begin to see through all its variations of 
thought the essential unity of Christianity. 
The most opposite types of Christianity, we 
have seen, have points of kinship. How 
far apart seem the Catholic and the so- 
called liberal Christian! and yet in their 
ultimate ideal they are one, for Catholicity 
and liberality are synonymes. Each of 
them is aiming to get beyond sectarian nar- 
rowness, and to build a universal Church. 
They agree as to their ideals : they disagree 
as to their way of reaching them. Calvin- 
ism and rationalism stand in antagonism 



The Unity of Christendom 123 

to-day; but, when we go back to the six- 
teenth century, we see that then Calvinism 
was rationalism. It was the application of 
the scientific method to the facts of relig- 
ion as then understood. John Wesley had 
many harsh things to say of the mystics, 
whose influence he thought he had escaped; 
and yet, in spite of this, his Methodism was 
but a kind of mysticism, and his experi- 
ences of religion were but the sudden flash- 
ings of the inner light. There is a spir- 
itual gravitation that holds us all. We 
emphasize our differences, but the law of 
the universe works steadily for unity. We 
contradict what our neighbor says, but we 
are silent when we find out what he means. 
In the Middle Ages people laughed at the 
idea of the antipodes : it was so unspeak- 
ably absurd that people should walk with 
their feet upward. But, when men trav- 
elled to the antipodes, they found that they 
very easily adapted themselves to the situa- 
tion. You say you do not understand how 
reasonable people can believe this or that 
thing which offends you. You are severely 
orthodox ; and you . cannot understand how 



124 "Members of One Body" 

one can pretend to have any religion at all, 
and not believe in the atonement and the 
infallibility of the Bible. You have a fine 
sense of propriety, and you don't under- 
stand how people can go through the streets 
beating tambourines for the glory of God 
like the Salvation Army. You are ex- 
tremely matter-of-fact, and believe only in 
that which you can see and touch; and you 
cannot understand how any one can be a 
theosophist. You are a very advanced 
thinker; and you like to have some new 
thought every day, or something that seems 
to you new. You do not understand how 
the Churchman can take comfort in a lit- 
urgy just because of its old associations. 
Well, probably the fact is that you do not 
understand. Did it never occur to you that 
it might be a very excellent thing if you 
were to try to understand? And perhaps, 
in trying to understand your neighbor's re- 
ligion, you, too, might be better able to 
understand the real meaning of your own. 
We build our Babel towers of spiritual 
pride, that all the world may see us, and 
come to us; and the result is only a sad 



The Unity of Christendom 125 

confusion of tongues. We forget ourselves, 
and go out and try to look at things through 
our neighbor's eyes; and we find that there 
is one language which never has been con- 
fused, but which all understand. 

In this slight study of the different types 
of religion we have found something admi- 
rable in each. * We acknowledge our debt to 
Roman Catholicism for its beauty and its 
dignity, for its ideal universality and actual 
grandeur; our debt to Calvinism for its 
stern sincerity, its logical consistency, its 
unbending rectitude; our debt to Metho- 
dism for its warmth; to rationalism for its 
searching light; to mysticism for its vision 
of peace. But what is greater than any one 
of these? All of them. Our very recogni- 
tion of the truth which each contains makes 
us realize how fragmentary each is. Mil- 
ton compares the work of sectarianism to 
that of Typhon in the Egyptian myth, who 
cut in pieces the body of Osiris. So he 
says : " They took the virgin Truth, hewed 
her lovely form in a thousand pieces, and 
scattered them to the four winds. From 
that time ever since the sad friends of 



126 "Members of One Body" 

Truth, such as durst appear, imitating the 
careful search that Isis made for the 
mangled body of Osiris, went up and down, 
gathering limb by limb, as they could find 
them. And we have not yet found them 
all, Lords and Commons, nor ever shall do 
so till her Master's second coming: he 
shall bring together every joint and mem- 
ber, and shall mould them into one immor- 
tal feature of loveliness and perfection." 

The partial truth which each sect illus- 
trates but makes us long for the full truth 
which would come, were all united. 

We come through the study of the sects, 
to the all-compelling ideal of the unity "of 
Christendom. The Church which will 
satisfy us must be not in name, but in fact, 
the Church of unity. The great things are 
the things which make for unity. The 
passion for righteousness, the love of truth, 
the sense of need, the solemn awe in the 
presence of the Infinite, the unconquerable 
hope that looks on death and yet prophesies 
life, — what form of religion is so divine 
that it does not find in these things the 
spring of its power and the secret of its 



The Unity of Christendom 127 

ineffable charm? And what form of reli^- 
ion is so poor that it does not to some de- 
gree express these things? The earthen 
vessels are various and grotesque; but the 
treasure within is one, "for the excellency 
of the glory is not of man, but of God." 

But how may this unity be practically 
realized? I have very little hope in any 
external power that shall compel uniform- 
ity. I think such external union under 
present conditions neither desirable nor 
practicable. When we read that different 
competing firms have united their interests 
in one great trust, we expect very soon after 
to find a modest item in the papers to the 
effect that this trust has taken measures 
to limit production. And, were all the 
churches of Christendom united in one 
Church, the next movement would be to 
repress the liberty of prophesying. If we 
cannot have liberty and union, we must 
cling ever to liberty. But I am one who 
believes that through the most perfect lib- 
erty will come at last the perfect unity. 

You long for the communion of saints, 
for the privilege of some large fellowship, 



128 "Members of One Body" 

from which you imagine that you are shut 
out by the different forms of ecclesiasticism. 
But the problem of Christian unity can be 
solved by each individual for himself. You 
can have all the communion and all the 
fellowship that you want if you are willing 
to accept it in the way it comes. There is 
no power in any sect or church that can 
prevent that largeness of sympathy which 
every man of true religion exercises. I 
like that good old New England Puritan 
who, when on account of some church quar- 
rel he was excommunicated by the church, 
refused to stay excommunicated. We read 
that for twenty years the good man came 
every communion Sunday, and brought with 
him a bit of bread and bit of wine of his 
own, and there, in the safety of his high 
pew, communed with the church, in spite 
of the deacons. When a man brings his 
own communion with him, who can pre- 
vent? Whether we shall enjoy the com- 
munion of saints depends on ourselves. 
The best that belongs to Calvinism and 
the best that belongs to Romanism is mine, 
if I seek it. This fellowship of the spirit, 



The Unity of Christendom 129 

which is the only fellowship that one need 
care to obtain, — this fellowship is ours, if 
we will. 

I have said that religion is a life, and 
life is that which brings unity. We come 
into sympathy with each other just in pro- 
portion as our life grows strong and full. 
The problem of church relations must 
always settle itself according to the de- 
mands of one's own life. 

What each one of us wants in religion is 
a more abundant life, and the only question 
is whether this form or that form gives it. 
Does a certain form of religion satisfy your 
deepest needs? Does it make life larger 
and more radiant? Does it make the laws 
of duty seem more absolute and divine? 
Then that is your religion, though all the 
world should scorn it; that is your word of 
life, because, when you hear it, you live. 
So long as it thus speaks to you, your work 
is to leave all and follow it. 

But has the time come when it ceases to 
be this? Does it no longer speak to you in 
a voice of divine authority, but has it begun 
to apologize for its own existence? Does 



130 "Members of One Body" 

it no longer bear you up as with great 
wings, but has it become a dead weight 
which you must carry? Does.it seem most 
doubtful to you when your mind is clearest, 
least necessary to you when you are most in 
need? Is your religion no longer some 
bright ideal, but only a reminiscence of 
the past? Does it no longer compel 
the upward look and the onward step? 
Then, though all men say that this is the 
only religion of the world, flee from it 
as from a graven idol. This is no longer 
your religion: it is your superstition. 
You are no longer in the great current of 
religious life: you are only in 

" Some dry river channel where the bulrushes tell 
How the water was wont to go warbling so sweetly 
and well." 

But, though the water once flowed never 
so sweetly along that channel, it is nothing 
now to you. But the living waters are not 
far away. Even now you hear their mur- 
mur. 

" From heart to heart, from creed to creed, 
The hidden river runs." 



The Unity of Christendom 131 

And, when you find what is indeed the 
spring of your true inspiration, you will 
find those waters again which shall satisfy 
your thirst. 

That which once was true you tell me is 
true no longer; that which once you loved 
with all your heart seems no longer worthy 
of your devotion. But may it not be be- 
cause some higher truth, some purer love, 
is coming to you? Then the thing which 
your heart at its best most purely loves, 
that follow; that truth which your own 
mind most clearly sees, that speak; and, 
finding there the secret of the upbuilding 
of your individual religious life, you come 
upon the secret of religious unity as well, 
for, "speaking the truth in love, we grow 
up to Him who is the head." 

Paul's glowing ideal still remains to 
be fulfilled. It is the unity of religion 
through the fulfilment of manhood. It is 
not the artificial unity which comes when 
individuality is suppressed, and all men are 
reduced to a single pattern. It is the unity 
which comes when "we are strong to appre- 
hend with all the saints what is the breadth 



132 "Members of One Body" 

and length and height and depth " of our 
religion. It is the unity which comes 
when we "walk worthily of the calling 
wherewith we are called, with all lowliness 
and meekness, with long suffering, forbear- 
ing one another in love, giving diligence to 
keep the unity of spirit in the bond of 
peace." It is the unity which comes when 
we recognize most clearly the varied gifts 
of men, and how each is necessary to that 
great body which grows by that "which 
every joint supplieth, according to the 
working in due measure of each several 
part." It is the unity which cannot be 
made perfect till manhood is made perfect, 
"till we all come in the unity of faith unto 
the full-grown man, unto the measure of 
the stature of the fulness of Christ." 




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